ArchivedLogs:Cagey Advice

Cagey Advice
Dramatis Personae Cage, Toru
In Absentia	2014-05-07 '
Location <NYC> PowerHaus - East Harlem
The weather's been picking up lately, but today has been greeted by a sudden rain shower that's put a bit of a damper on some moods. It's around early to mid evening, with the rain starting to calm down a bit, that AN UNKNOWN TRAVELLER finds himself standing at the stoop in front of Cage's place, hood pulled up over his head, a bag slung over his shoulder, hands crammed in his pockets. He stands there silently for a moment, slouching and generally looking like a layabout, but eventually pokes out a hesitant hand to ring the doorbell. There's a bit of a delay actually before the door opens. Several minutes, in fact. And then, instead of being greeted by the mountain of a man, Luke Cage is revealed sitting in a wheelchair. He rolls back slightly when he pulls the door open, and eyes Toru, still nearly at eye level with the young man. Luke is wearing gray athletic shorts with the Knicks logo on them, and a plain white t-shirt. He takes a beat, watching Toru on his doorstep, before he rolls back further. "Well, come on in. Maybe you got some ideas why I haven't heard from Trib in three days." Toru is just about ready to turn and leave when Cage takes so long to get to the door, but once it IS finally opened - well, the teen is standing kind of despondently in what rain there is left, creating the perfect picture of a pathetic kid as he looks, for once, /down/ at Luke. "Oh yeah, I think he said somethin' about you bein' in a wheelchair.." He runs a hand over his head, shoving the hood back as he steps inside, slipping his shoes off as he closes the door and scrubbing at his face with one hand. His messenger bag is shed as well, hoodie either hung up or thrown on the floor if he can't find a hook, and he just stands at the entryway a bit awkwardly for a moment. "...so how you been." Luckily for the hardwood floors, there is indeed a hook by the door. A whole coat rack, in fact. Complete with black umbrella (long, with curved, wooden handle) and black galoshes. The doorway opens onto a hallway flanked with rooms. On the right is the living room, which is where Luke leads them. It looks like he's wheeling himself ok, but his right arm is definitely not doing as well as his left. "I've been fine," he says dryly. As he leads the way back into the living room, it looks like it must have been a slow night for sports, because when Luke reaches out to mute the TV, he was apparently watching The Game Show Network. A new Family Feud episode. The noise of his wheels as he crosses the floors isn't loud, so much as just communicating the incredible weight supported by the chair as it moves over the boards. He turns to face Toru, rests the remote in his lap, and nods. "But I expect you've been having a worse week than I have." His kind eyes search Toru's face, trying to find some thread of what this might all be about. Toru silently follows Luke to the living room, finding himself a seat to sprawl on and, for the moment at least, avoiding any eye-contact with Cage - instead, he stares at the TV for a long moment, doing a pretty good job of not conveying much emotion. It does not, however, take very long for him to either get sick of the game show, or just let his problems boil over, because soon enough he drops his head to the arm of the chair he's draped on and mumbles, though audibly, "We sorta had a fight." Luke watches Toru's internal struggle with a sharp eye, and finally nods when the truth comes out. "Well, aside from mathematically being almost literally the worst person to give anyone relationship advice, my understanding is that these things happen. How bad was it?" The teen actually manages a little smirk at that joke, but otherwise he just shakes his head, breaking off eye-contact again and just sighing. "I really.. I don't know. I walked out in the middle of it 'cause I didn't wanna deal and.. that's pretty much where we're at." "Honestly, I'm betting that was the right move," Luke says, rubbing at the bristly stubble on his scalp. He must shave almost every morning, because there is an amount of gray in that stubble that would certainly be noticeable. "Sometimes arguments just spin and spin, and there's just no way to..." Luke trails off and sighs. "Well look, I'm not your dad, and I'm guessing you didn't come here for my /advice/. You need a place to stay? You got a place right here. But you'll have to use my room upstairs, because I'm living on the couch right now. Stairs are kind of a bitch, still." "I don't really know /what/ I want," Toru replies after another quiet moment. By now he's rolled himself over to look up at the ceiling, hands folded on his stomach, and draped across the arms of a chair in a position that really doesn't look that comfortable. "The thing is... it's somethin' I got no business bein' mad about, but I still /am/, and... I don't fucking know, man." He lets out a little sigh, closing his eyes and bringing an arm up to rest across them, shaking his head a few times. "I think maybe right now I just had to like... say it out loud, maybe. I don't know." "Hey, if you're pissed off, you're pissed off. I'm pretty sure nobody gets to tell you what you can and can't be mad about," Luke says, eyeing Toru's draped form from his wheelchair. He takes in a deep breath and sighs. "All I know is that to me at least, it seemed like you two were happy. It'd be a shame to let it go without at least revisiting the conversation. Then again, I dunno what happened, so yeah. Either way though, I gotta at least tell him you're here. You're ok. I'm also happy to tell him not to come by or call, if you want. But I gotta tell him you're here, ok?" With a slow sigh, Toru gradually pushes himself up to a proper sitting position, running his hands through his hair and just sighing again as he looks down at the floor. "You're probably right. It... I mean, it wasn't that kinda fight. It just... wasn't somethin' I was expectin' to deal with. Y'know?" That said, the teen pushes himself to his feet, padding gently back towards the door. "I guess you probably should tell ‘im that, he's probably tearin' the apartment apart. I'm gonna take a smoke break while you're doin' that so's I don't gotta listen to that goin' down. I don't really wanna hear the details right now, y'know?" "Yeah, I understand," Luke says, nodding as he reaches for his phone, leaning over to dig it out of his pocket. He dials the number and carries on a brief conversation. While Cage is having that conversation, Toru pads out to the front door quietly - presumably so as to avoid disrupting the call - and pulls his outerwear back on. Shoes, wet hoodie, even the messenger bag are all gathered back up before the teen opens the door, quiet as a mouse, and closes it just as quietly behind himself. By the time Cage is done with that conversation, he'll probably have figured out that Toru probably isn't intending to come back in from that smoke break.