ArchivedLogs:Dem Bones

Dem Bones
Dramatis Personae Ivan, Sebastian	2013-05-30 '
Location <XS> School Grounds
Xavier's School is situated on grounds as luxurious as the mansion itself. The tree-lined drive brings you up to the lush green sweep of front lawn and the wide front porch with its bench swing, often frequented by students studying in pleasant weather. The large oak tree in the front yard is home to a tire swing, installed long ago beneath the sturdy old treehouse. The lawn rolls out all the way down to the thin rocky pier at the edge of the glittering lake. The water stretches huge and wide off into the distance, the boathouse a small blip at its shore. Along its bank, forest stretches dense and shady to one side; to the other cliffs start to rise, high and rocky, providing trails for hiking or climbing, for the adventurous. It's late in the afternoon; the day has been quite hot and though it's passed its peak it isn't really wearing on towards /cool/ yet. The grounds are busy regardless, students out enjoying the NO CLASS time. One small figure is biking up the drive, a trailer hitched to the back of his bicycle. It's a very /pink/ bicycle, accented in glittery purple beads along its spokes. Bastian is colourful, too, pink jeans and white tank printed with dragonflies, a black hoodie that reads 'HERBIVORE' in a cross over its chest. The trailer of the bike has something large and boxy in it, currently covered up with a cloth though roping stretching from beneath the cloth suggests it has been carefully /tied/ into place. He doesn't head to the garage to park his bike; he pulls up by the front steps with his boxy large /thing/, hopping down off the bike and putting the kickstand down to prop it up. NO CLASS time is enjoyed wildly by some, more passively by others. Ivan is, perhaps unsurprisingly, in the latter category. The weather warming up has brought with it MANY crawly things around the school grounds, and the way he's wandering around with a notebook and a pen in tow might lead one to believe he means to catalogue /all of them/. There's a surprisingly lack of them actually /around/ him at the moment, though. Though one of the arms of his white dress shirt is held up at chest-height and, today, covered in spiders. /All/ kinds of spiders, every one of them different. Every one of them sitting obediently next to the other. And then, just as he passes a hedge that hasn't yet undergone his inspection, his wandering promptly... fails to happen. He stops, mid-step. His head tilts, and he turns. To stare at Sebastian, only a short distance away. Nothing new there. What /is/ new is that he /honest to god/ actually finds himself saying, in that heavy Russian accent, "Hello. How are you." There is something DIFFERENT about you today, Sebastian. Sebastian freezes, here, and a hint of colour creeps into his cheeks, darkening them -- they're kind of a good deal /paler/ than their usual blue, so the flush mostly just returns them to their normal hue. He is crouching by his trailer, starting to unhook the stretchy bungee cord that emerge from beneath the cloth to hook onto the sides of the bed. From under the cloth there are -- well, it's not very loud, but there's a /distinct/ rustling. Little legs. /Thousands/ of little legs. "-- Hi, Ivan," Sebastian manages a smile, small and timid. "I -- I'm doing alright, thanks. Kinda -- hot, biking in this --" He stops, looking a little /guilty/ for actually starting to elaborate on this question and instead says: "How are you?" Ivan is, admittedly, a little distracted. He does his best to look at Sebastian as he speaks but can't help but glance toward the sourse of those tiny tiny noises. The spiders once collected on his arm /scatter/ but only to his shoulders, so that he can clasp his hands together behind his back, pen and notepad caught between his fingers. He may... be slowly circling that trailer. He doesn't even need to HEAR that rustling to know something is there. So many somethings. If it was an item in a game, it would say, 'Summons One (1) Ivan, uses left: infinite'. "It is warm." He agrees, in a monotone echo of Sebastian's words. "I was counting spider species. I think I have them all." As if belatedly realising a smile is probably in order, he forces one on his face. Sadly it's a little, well, forced. And it isn't long before he's looking back toward that /rustling/ again. Like a kid on Christmas morning. "Oh -- oh." Sebastian's smile doesn't fade, it flees his face as Ivan starts circling the trailer. His head drops to focus back on unhooking the many tiedowns of his bungee cord. "That's really neat," he manages, and he sounds cheerful about it though he's not looking at Ivan. "The spiders, I mean. Like a Pokemon. How many does the school have, do you think?" He glances over his shoulder at other people playing out on the ground, at Brett kind of /gleaming/ in the sun where he studies on the porch, and leave the cloth over the box as he unhooks the last cord and winds all the cords into a ball to tuck into a corner of the trailer-bed. His lips press together as he straightens, reaching in to start to pick up the thing. And then frown. At his size it is kind of /unwieldy/-large for his arms to properly accommodate. "Twelve." Ivan notes solemnly, before his eyebrows are nudged down just slightly. He stands still when the last cords are unhooked- as if by magic, it seems to have unlocked Ivan's Talking Ability. "-- Or fifty-three. It is different, with- variations in species, it is different per definition- do you need help?" This is probably the least awkward Sebastian's seen him, so far, if only out of pure /eagerness/. His eyes flit somewhat impatiently from the box, to Sebastian, and then back to the box again. The insides of which, might just catch a little bit of that infectious jittery energy /just/ as he smiles again, meekly but this time more genuine. With an /edge/ of stray anxiety. The rustling is definitely increasing. Bastian sets the box back down on the edge of the trailer so that he can readjust his awkward hold on it, hesitating at Ivan's offer of help before offering a very tentative smile. "-- Yes. Please. I have to get this to my room and it's -- thanks. It's not /heavy/ it's just -- long." He keeps a hand against the side of the box to stabilize it as he circles around to one side to slide his hands down to its base. "Just, um, careful, I don't really want them getting -- everywhere people kind of freak -- well." His nose wrinkles sheepishly. "I guess you'd know that." Ivan hints as as much with a single nod. He knows this very much, and fails to linger on the subject. As Sebastian moves around, he steps /back/ and away almost without thought, the spiders on his shoulders suddenly released from what it was that was keeping them there. They messily jump ship, disappearing off to /wherever/ they'd like after reaching the ground on silky webby safety lines. Then, he takes a deep breath, puts his pen in a pocket of his jeans, and puts the trusty worn notebook-- just down on the ground, apparently, so he can amble over and help! "What are--" Hm. "They are beetles. What sort of beetles?" For a moment, it seems, forgetting that he's usually not real big into this /social/ thing. Especially, if the past is any indication, with sharkboys. Sebastian gives an answer in Vietnamese, first, to the question of what kind of beetles, as he picks up one end of the cloth-covered case and starts backing up into the school. Only once they're in the foyer does he remember to correct: "-- Dermestid beetles. I, um. There's a museum further out that lets me borrow them sometimes when I need to." His cheeks flush again, and he mumbles the rest of this kind of incomprehensibly. Ivan's eagerness doesn't translate into movement very well, and so he fortunately doesn't /rush/. In fact, he does the opposite, ever so careful with the delivery, which in turn may calm its contents. His eyes still flit from the cloth to Sebastian's face to where he's walking seemingly at random, an internal struggle for what to settle his attention on. Perhaps he has a gift for understanding incomprehensible, or maybe he just manages to catch 'borrow' near the end, there, but it isn't long before he asks, head cocked slightly to the side, "You have to give them back?" "Yeah," Bastian is heading for the stairs with this -- sure there is an elevator but it's only one floor and the stairs are wide, at least; as promised the thing is not /particuarly/ heavy, mostly just boxy-large. "I mean, I could keep my own colony? But I don't -- I only need them /sometimes/ and what would I do the rest of the time? I usually pick them up two weekends a month when I've --" again, devolving into mumbling, "-- collected a lot of bones for them to clean." He backs up the stairs carefully. The rustling shifts mostly over towards Ivan's side of the box. Which Ivan minds absolute zero units of minding. For a moment it seems like he'll just be happy trudging along after Sebastian, with his end of the box. The mumbling doesn't seem to faze him much, he's not exactly one to tell people to /speak up/. Nope. Just content! ... Until, that is, what is left of his smile escapes him, and his movements forwards and upwards cease in the middle of the stairs. Still holding on, but frozen where he stands, his attention now struggling a lot less to stay on Sebastian's face. "... Bones?" The rustling begins to suffer an inadvertent wave of empathically induced quiet. If only there were some crickets around to break the newly created silence. "Yes," Sebastian says uncomfortably, looking down at the white cloth and frowning at its sudden quiet. "Dermestid -- they're scavengers, they -- are really good for cleaning. Um. Skeletons? If you get most of the -- of the flesh off first and let it -- let it dry a little, they'll -- it's much better for cleaning than -- if you boil them they go all yellow and if you bleach -- they'll weaken --" He trails off in his kind of stammering ramble, looking self-consciously downwards. "Can we -- keep -- going. This is -- we're blocking the stairs." No. No, we can't, apparently. Ivan doesn't move, save for his breathing being suddenly just slightly quicker than it was just before. He just... stares. Eyes widening. Face draining of colour. Swallowing back what is hopefully the urge to DROP the box because that would be /bad news/. Especially if Sebastian is a... "Are you a /serial killer/." The words are spoken loud and clear, and they're out before he knows it. Regardless, he shows no regret for having them OUT THERE. Sebastian's eyes shoot open wide, huge black pools in his too-pale-blue face. "Wh --" His grip tightens on the box. "What I -- no. I mean I hunt a lot of -- I just -- /no/ I only kill the -- for food I --" His fingers clench harder. "I have the beetles for art. From -- from the bones of -- what I hunt." This is maybe not HELPING. Sebastian's words hitch somewhat, interrupted at intervals by the rapid fluttering of his gills. "Please," it's ragged with that fluttering, too, head turning slightly to /dart/ a look to a pair of students STARING at this exchange and electing to take the elevator instead, "can we please not -- just -- look I can take it. The rest of. The way. Please." Ivan's grip on the box increases, even if it may not be entirely on purpose. As his nervousness increases, so does it spread to the beetles, putting an end to that silence. But he fails to move, either to let Sebastian take the box by himself, or to continue /helping/. His eyebrows inch toward each other, and his expression is getting dangerously close to deer-in-the-headlights. "Kill the what?" After that, it's his turn to mumble, though in Russian. "{If your next word is 'people', then I swear I'm going back to Russia a week early and never fucking coming back.}" Sebastian winces, and he shifts, lifting one leg to the next step up to rest /his/ end of the case on his knee. He shifts around to the adjacent side of the box, closer to Ivan's end, one hand creeping out in its grip towards Ivan's to adjust his hold. It's -- awkward, probably not very well-balanced. Probably hard to see around his weird angle of box-holding. But he is determinedly tugging it -- though his rather significant strength advantage means very /little/ when he can barely get a proper grip. "-- the. Everything, I don't know. Fish. Squirrels. Deer sometimes. Sometimes smaller things. Just -- we need to eat a /lot/ and I always feel bad if -- my pa would go /broke/ trying to feed us when we're at home," Sebastian is explaining kind of miserably, black eyes a little bright and still fixed on the white cloth, "we kill a lot of things," is quieter still, sort of small and self-conscious. "It's hard to. Get. Enough protein." Whether or not Sebastian's words actually get through to Ivan is, for a moment, hard to spot. He just sort of stands there cluelessly, until the other teenager comes towards him. Then he /leans/ back, and in doing so nearly lets go of the case entirely. It's slow in coming, but... Ivan does, eventually, relax. And when he does, he reaches to wrap his arms around the case again, even if it's at the /very/ back, peering toward Sebastian with eyes still wide. Just-- less fearful now. WAIT. NO. I'M HELPING. "/I misunderstood/." He blurts out, then, before exclaiming somewhat hurriedly, "Fish, deer, squirrels - not people. I am sorry. Sorry." Eye contact with Sebastian is broken, now. Focusing solely on the case. In which all is right again, from the sounds of it. "Hhhah," it's a quick breath of laughter startled out of Sebastian and this time it's /him/ who almost drops the case. He catches it against his leg, though, and returns to his end to curl his hands beneath it snugly. His head turns, one side and then the other, pressing each eye in turn against his shoulder to blot them against his sweatshirt. "Of course not -- not people, Ivan, I don't --" There is quiet, as he starts moving again. Slowly, backing up the stairs once more. "-- don't /want/ to hurt anybody," he finishes, quieter and less comfortably. Kind of guiltily. "I'm sorry." A silence follows, over the rustle of the case's contents, as it once more begins ascending with both their help. It's a little while before Ivan speaks again, and by then fear has left his voice, whether through force or not. His face retains some of the unease, but has slipped a great deal towards neutrality again. "Okay." It's simple, but sincere. Just 'okay, I believe you'. Then, somewhat quieter but joined by a brief, concerned sort of glance upwards, "Can I see? Your art." In the silence Sebastian just continues ascending the stairs. He looks like he kind of wants to hurry. But he doesn't, taking his time and trying not to jostle the case around too much until they reach the door of his room. Outside he hesitates, glancing down at the cloth. It takes a moment before he pushes the dormroom door open. "Okay." Just that, too. He is steering the large box towards the barer of the two desks. It's not his. But Shane's is neat and /empty/ so that he can set the thing down, pull the cloth off to reveal a very large terrarrium with a mesh top, /teeming/ with what must be near a thousand dark beetles. Swarming around their substrate, clambering over pieces of cardboard stuck in there for no better reason than to give them clamberng-surfaces. Once the terrarium is set down and revealed, Ivan takes-- actually a small amount of time actually /looking/ at it. Scanning it for what he may have suspected to be underneath, only for his suspicions to be confirmed. Only then does he turns to look at the rest of the room, perhaps too closely for a lot of people's comfort. Just taaking it all in. Finally, he turns to Sebastian again. To say, simpy, "Show me your favourite art that you have made." Maybe not his best attempt at English. Sebastian folds up the terrarium cover neatly, and while Ivan looks around the room, /he/ opens a cooler that is -- kind of full of carcass, really. Skeletons, bones mostly picked clean by the twins' voracious appetites; he lays a couple /large/ fish skeletons inside the terrarium, watching the beetles swarm to them. The mesh gets closed again securely. Ivan's question earns a small, tentative smile. He moves to his own desk, which is covered in notes, books, bright colorful post-its stuck to its backdrop of shelving. Also some bones, already cleaned and arranged into neat piles; to one side of the desk there is a structure in the process of being built, a nest of bones interlaced neatly together. No glue, just very careful carving to /notch/ the pieces so they all fit right. They are being fashioned, it seems, into a large circular cage of some sort. "My favourite --" He glances over towards his closet. "My /favourite/ is -- Pa keeps it in the art room, do you want to --" His smile is still tentative, but it grows a small tick wider. "-- do you want to come see?" More than anything else, it's the beetles swarming the fish bones that catches Ivan's attention. His eyes finally stray from it when he stands to the side, out of the way, to observe both the creations he can already see, and to watch Sebastian move around. Kind of closely, now that they're in the dorm room, perhaps with a lingering bit of trepidation. The kind that keep people from turning their backs to someone, just-- in case. If it's any more than that, he's doing a well enough job of hiding it, timidly returning the smile in a small twitch of his lips. And he nods. "I want to come see."