ArchivedLogs:Different Lives

Different Lives
Dramatis Personae Kay, Regan	2013-11-17 (Part of Infected TP.)
Location <NYC> BoM Safehouse - Lower East Side
Tucked away off a little-used side street in the Lower East Side, sandwiched between a youth drop-in center and a taqueria, this narrow three-story townhouse has very little to catch the eye. Boarded-up windows, a door peeling its paint, shabby grubby brickface; from the outside it does not look like much. Inside someone has gone to great lengths to renovate the building into something more habitable. It isn't glamorous but it is comfortable, old furniture dragged in, the place generally swept clean. The first floor holds a large living room, a smaller dining room, a spacious kitchen, a half-bathroom. There are three bedrooms and a full bathroom on the second floor; the attic is just a large empty space crammed full of boxes with a window out to the large flat roof. The basement, much like the attic, consists of a lot of empty space. A bare concrete floor, no windows, occasional poles running up to the ceiling. A tiny half-bathroom down here, too. Not a whole lot else. The door opens and closes rapidly, Kay's lean body slithering in sideways and then pressing his back against the door once it's closed. His head is turned to the side to press his ear against the door, frozen still and unbreathing. Then he lets out a quiet 'hah!' and greens, sauntering the rest of the way into the safehouse. His clothes are badly scorched, the newly liberated steel toe boots he'd swiped in SoHo are now considerably more /broken in/ and dirty now. He smells like a barbecue but then - when doesn't he. His long arm raises up like a buzzard wing, allowing a boy and girl, each with a matching drawn and haggard face, to pelt in to throw their arms around his bony hips, murmuring identical, "Frag! Hey, Frag, you bring us anything?" Grinning hard, still not looking at them, Kay fishes a small handful of Jolly Ranchers out of a breast pocket, distributing them amongst the two, roving his eyes around the interior. The house is busy; it's been far busier during this apocalypse than usual, overcrowded with mutants turned away from the shelters. Some of them /eying/ those Jolly Ranchers with envy; food has been /lean/ and a little bit of candy to spice up the carefully rationed beans-and-rice diets probably sounds excellent right about now. Somewhere in the back of the cluster of life is Regan, just emerging from the kitchen with thumbs hooked into her beltloops. Tall boots, grey jeans ticked into them, black leather jacket overtop, all looking remarkably clean and serviceable given the current state of violence outside -- but she has her ways of walking right /through/ all that. Only once candy has been distributed does she peel herself away from the doorway to stride closer to Kay. "How'd the kid do out there last night?" She doesn't ask how /Kay/ did out there, but for Toru she has curiosity. Kay's brought a few other small items he'd picked up here and there on his rounds - a couple bottles of cheap nail polish he hands off to a ragtag gaggle of preteens (three girls, two boys) sitting around last month's issue of Seventeen magazine, and side by side on a center table he sets out a pill bottle of fast-acting laxitives and two boxes of condoms for all and sundry to have access to. "Did a'right, did a'right," Kay is saying easily to Regan as he arranges them. "Cleared a few streets coming back, he handled his share." Finally, he hides his hands behind his back, puffing up his chest at Regan in the universal gesture to /pick a hand/. His eternally glassy-lively amber eyes twinkle even while gritting his teeth, "--ran into his /roomfriend/ in Clinton." Regan nods at this assessment, a small pleased smile briefly touching her lips. "Good. Come eat. It isn't much but there's even some egg fried in." Though she's probably had to intermittently /beat/ people away from just /eating/ the laying chickens housed on the island." Her eyebrows lift as she eyes Kay. One hand, then another. Eventually she points at the right hand, beckoning a finger like, gimme. "/Really/. Did Bones make /introductions/?" That shifting around behind Kay's back /openly/ seems to be handing back and forth between his hands whatever item he'd brought, as if still deciding whether he wants to rig the game in her favor or /his/. Snip-snp-flick! There's a spiraling flash of silver and a soft clink, and he holds up between them the very sharp blade of a butterfly knife, head low behind it with scarred eyebrows raised /way/ up. Then, flp-snk-clk, he's closed the knife again into itself, a simple stainless steel handle with a columbine flower etched into its outside, and hands it over to Regan. "Eventually. Guy fits the bill about right. Six-foot-/eight hundred/, built like a linebacker. Condescending fuckwit. Kid seems scared to death of pissing him off." Regan's smile returns at this flash of silver. She plucks the blade from Kay's hand, and there's another glinting arc in the air. Flick open, flick back closed smoothly. Flick open again, this time to look at the length of the blade before she closes it again. "You're too kind. I can kill zombies /elegantly/, now." She sounds genuinely pleased at this thought. She tucks the blade into her pocket, gesturing Kay to follow towards the kitchen. "Scared?" /This/ does not sound pleased at all. "The boy can handle himself in the cops' murder ring and in hordes of zombies, and his --" Her lips thin. "/Roomfriend/ has him frightened?" "Woman, you could make it elegant with a lump hammer," Kay follows behind, tall and lanky with long legs swinging in that classical nonchalant manner of someone entering a kitchen /totally/ not intending to sneak samples. You'd be able to hear him quietly sniffing around for supper. Close enough he might also be sniffing around in Regan's hair. For FOOD. Closer, speaking lower, Kay's scratchy vulpine voice isn't warm. "Yeah, well. The kid's a fighter. And this guy seems to want to /break/ him of it. If the kid wasn't right there, I'd have fragged him right there." Supper is fried rice and black beans, not the most elaborate of meals but the soy sauce and sesame oil and onion in the rice help give it flavour and the egg mixed in fills it out somewhat. Regan dishes out a bowl, sticking a spoon into it to give it (and not her /hair/) to Kay. "He is a fighter." Her lips are still pressed together as she pulls herself up to sit on the counter beside the stove. "Go through things like he has, you come out a fighter or you come out broken. I can't say someone /wanting/ to break him /charms/ me. -- You saw him down in Clinton? Is that where he lives?" Kay makes a huge /heeeeeeee/ face when Regan turns around with his bowl of YUMYUMS, collecting it to his chest like Oliver Twist. If Oliver Twist wore leather motorcycle kuttes and shaved the sides of his head. The grin falls off when he sets to work actually eating, propping a hip up against the counter across from Regan and speaking down into the food dish, "Yeah. And if that's where he lives, it's where they both live. Or as the kid put it," dramatic pause, while Kay shovels a forkfull of food into the side of his cheek, "-'don't piss him off, I have to live with the guy'." CHEWCHEWCHEW, his narrow face is, for once, much fuller with one cheek pouched out with food. A bit of rice sprays when he adds, "Don't like 'im, Rey." "And what, exactly, happens to Bones if this man does get pissed off." Regan doesn't say this like she's /asking/ it, instead just musing it downwards towards her hands. She slides her shiny new butterfly knife back out of her pocket, flick-flicking it open. Closed. Open. Closed. "He does know we have beds to spare, mmm? Even one for him already. And with New York in its current state, nobody will even /notice/ if he breaks a lease." Flick-flick. Flick-flick. "Or one more man missing among so many." "Old Bones ain't never exactly had a problem extending a middle finger in a face he didn't like." Kay gestures at Regan with a fork, "I reminded 'im, though. He knows. I dunno, maybe he don't care." He seems to rather enjoy Regan's knife movements - it earns a boyish happy grin for the distraction. Save that it doesn't seem entirely unrelated, does it. "I dunno. Maybe the kids a dabbler. Said he didn't mention having a boyfriend to us 'cause he didn't like mixing business with /personal/. Maybe he /likes/ having some huge macho fucker pretending to be his daddy." Much as this is trying to be derisive, it sounds more sick and unhappy. And he mutters, "...he didn't /look/ like he was enjoying himself. He was all cringing up at the guy even walking away after a few minutes. If he's laid a hand on the kid? And I'd just let him walk...?" "Some people are into that," Regan agrees absently. "Though when they are, it doesn't tend to make them /cringe/." Flick-flick. "-- Are we /business/, then." Her tone has slipped dryer, her eyes lifting to search the ceiling. "If he's been hurting one of ours -- well. We /do/ know where he lives." Suddenly, she sounds cheerful at that. "Some mistakes are easily remedied." Kay lifts his eyes up from his food, "And if he doesn't wanna be one of ours?" Flick-flick. "Everyone needs to figure out for themselves what they want in life. If he doesn't want to be one of ours --" Regan flicks the knife deftly open and closed again. "Then I guess we can't help him." "S'only really got excuses." Kay rolls a hip, raising knee - for one moment looking like a dog about to take a leak a hydrant before he's settling an ass cheek up on the counter, hoisting himself up to sit as well. "He feeds us plenty about it. I'd bet my right tit, he gives that dickhole a helping as well. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?" He swings his feet, making a kind of passing /yum!/ face, eyes closed into contented slits that have NOTHING to do with his heavy words. /Multitasking/, does Kay. "What excuses he feeds himself?" Regan lifts a hand, its heel rubbing absently against a temple, smoothing back stray blonde hair to tuck behind her ear. "What excuses did you, when you were his age?" She closes the knife again, thumb tracing slowly over the flower etching. "He'll make his choice one day. We all do." For a moment her lips press thinner together. "And I suspect that when this all ends, those choices will be more immediate than ever." "By the time I was his age," swing-swing, Kay's foot continues its lazy pendulum, "I'd already made my choice." It's not judgmentally said, drawing a lazy circle in the air with a utensil with the entirely aware addition, "Different life." His head turns, watching the two children he'd brought in sitting on the ground, playing a card game of (what is that - he squints - Golf?) Exhaling, "Lotta different lives." Omnom, he licks his fork and glances back at Regan, "What brought you into all this?" Regan slides down off the counter, flicking her fingers out towards the door. "Hard for one of us to live in the world and not be /dragged/ into it, one way or another." She slips the knife back into her pocket, glancing out towards the door again. "That part's never even a question. The only choice is how you answer it." "I dunno," Kay shrugs, "People're more than just one choice. It's all kinda one on another on another, between start'n finish." He tips up his bowl to /shovel/ the rest of his food into his mouth, eyes squeezed tight for a moment like it feels so good it /hurts/. He's been burning energy like a fiend these days. "Least for me." Hoip! He springs back down to his own feet as well, heading towards the sink to rinse his dish. "Not that you gotta tell me a damn thing," he adds, playfully smacking the running water to send a few spare droplets pattering about her feet. "People are many choices," Regan agrees mildly, "but joining up with us generally takes one." The side of her mouth hooks upward in a smile, a shower of water spattering back onto Kay when the sink evidently decides to just /attack/ him with sprinkling. "It might be storytime some day. I need to get back to the clinic, though. I think," there's definite added cheer to her tone, "things might be turning around soon." "Helpin' the /man/," Kay isn't going to resist /that/ one, especially since he's ducked behind his arms from water that /doesn't exist oh god how is it so wet/. Regan just /snorts/. And for a moment the entire sink turns on Kay like a /hose/ of soaking-wetness that -- simply vanishes into nothing as she steps out the door. Her last view of Kay will be of him standing, arms out and head thrown back, soaking hair plastered back to his head and cackling in the watery torrent. Until there is no torrent at all, and he's catching his breath. Grinning still. Teeth gritted. And hands in fists.