ArchivedLogs:Chinese and Closeness

Chinese and Closeness
Dramatis Personae Jim, Melinda	2013-03-31 '
Location <NYC> Melinda and Tag's Apartment - Lower East Side
As it is Easter, Melinda's apartment has been drastically recolored for the sake of the holiday. Instead of going for Christian iconography, the place is done up in places in bright commercialist style, with cartoon bunnies and eggs, while other parts have odes to pagan goddesses and other rites of that theme. Melinda doesn't seem to mind much, the gathering of holiday coloration, but she does look drained and tired, nursing a cup of coffee around evening time, staring at her lap top as she tries to decide what to get delivered tonight. Apparently, the only think listed as open is Chinese food. She sighs. She starts composing an order. She's dressed in jeans and an oversized tee shirt with thick and fuzzy socks on her feet. 'Knk-knk'. That's all - just two short, flat knocks on the door. And then silence. Well... silence aside from a dull hive-like buzz of grouchy-stubborn reluctance radiating faintly in the shared space of minds. Melinda rises mechanically and heads to the door, not bothering with the peep hole. Instead, she unlocks it and opens it wide. "Hey Jim." She states flatly as well, taking a moment to look him over. "I was about to order Chinese. Want some?" Jim stands in typical brown corduroy jacket and cheap shoes, an argyle sweatervest beneath. It's hard to say whether his thick stubble is meant to be a quasi-beard or just an overgrown five o'clock shadow. Also: brilliant orange, sunny yellow, some crimson red in the form of flowers. Which he holds against his chest protectively with eyes popped open /warily/ and brows furrowed down hard above them. "--yeah." He bark-grunts this, nothing else in his face moving. And then, he comes forward. Shoves the flowers to Melinda without looking at her. Roving the decor with his gaze. Melinda is stunned when she receives flowers. She looks at them for a long time then leans in and inhales, searching for fragrance. "Um, Laptop's on the couch. Website should be open. If you prefer somewhere else that delivers here, I don't mind if you switch." Her tone is still flat, but she's gaining a hint of mystified in the background. She still remains standing by the door, holding her flowers, staring at them. Eventually, she closes the door and locks it and heads toward the kitchen, and starts to vase said flowers. "I don't know how to use these damn things," Jim can be heard muttering in the living room, crouching in front of the computer. Not Touching It. The flowers retain a very pleasant greenish-sweet smell; they're daisies, the petals near the center of a few still slightly green. After performing the flower-vasing ritual, Melinda heads back to the living room and sits down next to Jim, pulling the computer into her lap. "What do you want? Off the top of your head?" She is already selecting crab rangoons for herself with chicken lo mein and oh, wait some eggrolls to go with it. She glances at Jim and considers. "Beef and broccoli? Or are you actually a vegetarian, on account of your treeishness?" "There are carnivorous plants, y'know." Jim drops down onto the couch as well, a hand running across the middle of his face, teeth idly bared. "Think plants eatin' other plants," he pronounces through his teeth, "is cannibalism. Moo goo gai pan. Could go for some snowpeas." He glances at the doors leading off to different bedrooms, "How're the roomies settling in?" "Blissfully. Everyone has their own room now and their own doors that they control and their own keys -- it comes with their own bills, but I think everyone is finding that to be nice in its own way too." Melinda finds the moo goo gai pan and orders it. "Brown or white rice?" She sits a little closer to him, letting one thigh lightly rest against his, wondering if this is okay. "Brown. And I guess some egg drop soup." Jim glances down at Melinda's leg. And then out across the room, out a window. The stretch of his arm and the way he lays it with painfully casual ease along the back of the couch without looking at her are independent of his bland, semi-disgusted growl, "Old Jax is in the news again." "In the news again," Melinda blinks, adding the two items and clicking the option to send order. She then looks at the total and what she put in for delivery tip. "You owe me fifteen." She closes the computer, but makes sure her phone is out and available. "This about the thing Thursday?" Her nose wrinkles in remembrance. She draws her legs up and under her, shifting a little more of her weight toward him. "Yeah, Thursday. My wallets in my inner pocket." Jim rolls a shoulder to give Melinda a view of it just within is jacket. If she's there, she may as well be useful. "Been watching the footage day in and out. Those kids attacking /Osborn/... Tsss. S'going to make things harder in the future." "Your arms are broken?" Melinda asks with a small snort. She is not at all above shifting her weight again, leaning closer, and sliding her hand across his chest to grab his wallet and pull it out of his jacket pocket. She settles back against his side, shoulder under his, opening the thing and looking through it instead of just grabbing the money. "Yeah. But talking to teenagers is hard. Did you hear? They are back out on the streets. People say Magneto rescued them." Mel is far too distracted by his id to get any cash from him. "Hah. 'Rescued'. If they're lucky, yeah; though pointing the finger at Osborn right there in front of the world will sure make him a good fall guy if -- hey!" Jim is /trying/ to be morose here, frowning Melinda starts going through his crap. "What if I had naked pictures in there." Wishful thinking; there is no cheesecake to be found. The driver's license for all practical purposes looks like an id from Texas; his birthday is depicted as June eighth, 1974. His middle name is cited as 'Lawrence'. Except that he says: "S'not even accurate, geez." "Which part?" Melinda looks up at him in her snuggled position. "Honestly, I don't know why you chose Texas. Don't they have rangers there that'd hunt you down for being illegal about something? They're worse than marshalls, right?" She's making shit up. She extracts a twenty from his billfold and folds the wallet back up. The twenty, she slips in her pocket. The wallet, she slips back into his, and keeps her arm there. “In the old /west/ maybe,” Jim ratchets a chuff-laugh, “These days I’m a little white to be ‘illegal’.” He looks down at the arm draped across him, and then turns away to look at - that chair. Over there. Cough. And since he didn’t actually answer her real question, he is still rolling 20’s for Obscure Unhelpfulness, “-- why don’t you try an’ guess.” "If you were a woman, I'd think you'd try to make yourself younger." Melinda admits as she closes her eyes and just leans against Jim for a while. "James Lawrence Morgan sounds nice together." Eventually, she thinks, << oh, no returned attention - should probably stop, >> and pushes herself up and sits up without touching him. She pulls the laptop over and begins to check her email before grabbing her coffee and drinking the rest of it down, curled in a ball. "You going to the show tonight?" The very far corners of Jim’s wryly shaped mouth have very slowly raised a micro-inch while he studies the Eastery decor - the actual /studying/ is somewhat inwardly /aghast/, from a moody photographer’s standpoint, so it’s likely not for what he’s looking at. But at just which part he /is/ smiling about isn’t clear. “-what, the concert? Guess i was thinking about it. Didn’t really have the scratch for a ticket when they were going like hotcakes. You know if they sold out?” His cheap bone is aching. "Didn't Ryan or Shelby send you a ticket and backstage pass? I had one, made a hundred or more selling, but gave the money to Jax to get Ryan out of the clink." Yes, Melinda just said that out loud. "Then he got us new ones, with backstage passes. I'm… heading over with a group of teenagers as a chaperon, but," she turns to look at him, "I still wanted to know if you're going." “You /scalped/ your ticket and /Jax/ had to bail the guy out?” the hand Jim has resting on the couch back behind Melinda smacks down against the cushion for lack of a /thigh/ to smack, making a rustly smoker laughs, dropping his head back, “Maaaaan, hasn’t that guy got an /agent/ for that kind of stuff? That /sucks/.” Except that he’s laaaughing, because hey, they got their tickets back. No harm no foul. A similar sentiment to his casual shrug, “And nah, I didn’t get sent one. I’m not all that part of their group - you heard Hivey, I just fuck shit up anyway.” (There’s a slight dull ache with this; someone is /butthurt/ still, apparently, and viciously striving to just write it off. << -meh, might be true. asshole. >>) “What teenagers you got going?” "My friend Lucien's sister Desiree and the Holland twins." Melinda responds, leaning forward to lean her coffee mug on the coffee table and then chooses to lay down on the stretch of couch that Jim is not occupying, her head near Jim's thigh, but not on it. "I'm trying to caffeine load for the night, but I'm kind of a morning person, all things considered and I just don't want to right now. I'm sure once it'll kick in, I'll be okay, but right now... I just kind of want to sleep." There's a pause and then she rubs at her nose. "Can't be true. Shelby fucks shit up more than you and she's the one who got the gig. Maybe yours is just waiting at will call because you're an asshole that doesn't use email." Case in point: Jim looks down at her like she’s crazy, “They do tickets through /email/ now?” What. "Good lord, Jim, how do you spy on people without computers these days? Yes. They've been doing tickets by email for at least five years now." Melinda grasps around for a pillow to hug to her chest as she lays on her side staring at the coffee table. “Y’know not every damn private investigator’s a freaking hacker,” Jim grouses. Because clearly ‘email tickets’ and ‘hacking’ are the same thing. “I’ve only not been living out a /car/ for the past few years.” He glances down at Melinda and then just as quickly off again, frowning. And, after a moment, he drops his arm off the couch back to just kind of set it on Melinda’s shoulder. Like an armrest. “How’re the twins doing these days?” Melinda nudges her head a little closer to Jim again when he finally touches her shoulder, a small smile following. Her eyes close again. "They're unhappy. I don't know much - I just know they managed to be allowed to go to the show, probably because of chaperones and their friend, so that'll be nice. Maybe we'll take'm out for burgers after - or get them straight home so they don't get in trouble. I don't know. Whatever the night calls for." “Good for them,” Jim says, though grimly. There’s a certain inner disquiet at the idea of the twins being unable to get out of the house to even see friends. Frown. “Tell Shaney he owes me a pack of cigarettes when he gets back. He still working for you under the table?” "It's been hard - what with new foster parents dictating his schedule every other day -" There may be some hyperbole in Melinda's statement, there probably isn't. "Plus, the state doesn't exactly prioritize employment right now." She leaves it vague as she headbuts his leg in slow motion, pushing her head forward until it's touching his thigh. She's still hugging her pillow pretty hard. "I'll let him know if he's not too cranky about shit." “Man, I’ll be happy when they’re outta this mess.” He breathes. Not looking down - /deliberately/ not - he drops his arm on the far side and pats his leg nearest Melinda’s head in silent invitation. “All of them.” He grudges to allow << even Hive >>. “Though I guess strange fruits - I didn’t think Jax’d ever get /time/ for dating. And now there’s that guy from the snowball fight around.” Which is /still/ how he remembers Micah. “Small favors.” Melinda lifts her shoulders and scoots forward again, resting her cheek and temple on Jim's thigh, the back of her head resting against his abdomen a little. She rests her hand next to her face on his thigh as well, staying close. "It's amazing what people find time for, when it comes that kind of stuff." -- As if what she was doing wasn't at all related. Melinda relaxes more with the intimate contact, her breathing slower and deeper. "It's so fucked up that the government can just come after them like that. It's intensely disturbing." “That ain’t even the half of it; they’re still chuggin’ right along with it even after the expose,” he drums his fingers on Melinda’s elbow in his brooding. “Could have been worse - that creep Osborn at least did him a solid, turning it into an oppressed hero story instead of the press aiming for the old tried and true ‘hero... or /child/-abuser’ angle.” He doesn’t feel /better/ thinking that he’s supplied the material for a few of these stories in his line of work; though truth is truth, and photographs don’t lie - those stories had at least been tragically, woefully real. His inner callous is showing, chafing in his mind like a raw sore. “They’re not gonna get away with it. Just gotta sit tight.” << -and let Murph and me get the evidence together. >> Melinda moves the hand near her face up and around to his hip. It's sort of like a hug, but it also obscures her face and removes her elbow from the drumming, at least for now. "No one likes sitting tight, Jim," she speaks up, the words muffled but audible. "I'm glad no one has had to bear the horror of child abuse stories." She hooks her fingers in Jim's pant leg side pocket and relaxes her arm, letting it stay anchored. "What about that Madrox guy? I haven't actually asked you about him yet." Aaaaaaa, Jim is getting encroached upon. He’ll just - put his arm right where it had been before, though with Melinda’s arm tossed across him, it is vaguely sheltering where it drapes. “Eeeeh, we all got our horror stories. /Jamie/?” His grin lights up for a moment, shaking his head, “Jamie’s solid. He could use a kick in the pants a few times but he’s an /army/ at your back if you when you need him.” Har har. Mel doesn't quite understand the joke, but doesn't really care all that much. She's comfortable. It is, of course, at moments like this that her cell phone rings and there's suddenly a need to get up. She extracts herself slowly and unhappily from the warm, prone position and sits up. The cell is snatched up and she speaks almost groggily. "Yeah, this is she. Oh. Okay. I'll open the door." And she's heading around Jim back to the doorway. "Food's here." Jim’s arm returns to the couch back when Melinda sits up, running a hand over his face. “Yeah.” He stands up, “I’ll go down with you. I’m dying for a smoke.” For just a moment, when he catches up with her, his arm drops around her back on the way out. But doorways have a way of favoring groups that move in singlefile. So it breaks off on the way out. And the door clicks shut behind them.