ArchivedLogs:Gorgeous

Gorgeous
Dramatis Personae Doug, Dusk, Maya	2014-02-04 '
Location <NYC> Tompkins Square Park - East Village
Small but popular, this tree-lined park is a perfect centerpiece to the eclectic neighborhood it resides in. Home to a number of playgrounds and courts from handball to basketball, it also houses a dog park and chess tables, providing excellent space for people watching -- especially during its frequent and often eccentric festivals, from Wigstock to its yearly Allen Ginsberg tribute Howl festival. Even long after night has fallen, the chocolate rain still falls steadily from the sky. The glut of people out in it has trickled off, though, which has left Tompkins Square quieter than its earlier riot of crowd. There are still more than its usual numbers for this hour, out collecting chocolate, making /sundaes/ as the milk hardens into pudding and mousse and ice cream, but in this one particular patch of playground it is just one lone figure perched way up high atop a tall complicated confectionary of jungle gym. Dusk makes a /very/ identifiable silhouette, backlit by streetlamps. Even today after the colours have faded from the world into the brown of chocolate rain, his wings look like an /acid-trip/, paint-splatter swirled in /vivid/ rainbow hues. The rest of his attire is less brilliant, Vans sneakers and black denim jacket and bluejeans, blue hat, blue gloves, blue scarf. His head is thrown back, wings spread out /wide/, arms spread out wide, too. He's hard to miss, catching city-light and chocolate rain alike in a profile that looks -- somewhat demonic, giant sharp-tipped wings flared to their full huge extension. There's an odd thrumming vibration only /barely/ audible to people though it's putting a stray canine here and there at just a bit of unease. This time of night is not unusual for spotting Doug coming home from work. Long hours often mean a quick jog through the park to get home a bit faster. Tonight seems to be one of those nights, as the blonde can be spotted moving quickly along the path near the playground. Dressed in jeans and a dark grey overcoat mostly hiding a white shirt under a purple sweater, he has his laptop bag slung over his chest, and his backpack hanging heavily from one shoulder. For once, he doesn't have his phone in his hand, which means that he spies the lone figure on the jungle gym, which brings him to a stop. "Oh, my gosh," he says, just loud enough for Dusk to hear. "You look like Goliath dipped in /art/." Which totally meets with his approval, given his wide smile as he veers to enter the playground. "How'd you manage that?" One of those canines walking past is a large fluffy tricoloured Bernese, licking happily at patches of chocolate as she lopes along on her evening stroll. At the other end of Ratri's leash, Maya is colourful herself -- puffy thigh-length purple coat, green and purple and silver salwar suit with gauzy dupatta layered over fleece and synthetic base layers. She stops just outside the fence of the playground to rein Ratri in, dropping a mittened hand to the dog's head to calm the quiet whine of the Bernese. And to /gawk/, open and unabashed. "-- Oh, my gods above." Her mouth just falls open, to /gape/. "I'm -- I'm sorry, I -- you must get this a lot but --" There's a small blush in her cheeks. "I sound like a tourist and I'm not -- it's alright to say no, I just -- do you mind if I take a picture, I just. Your wings are the most gorgeous thing I've seen all day." Dusk starts to tip his head back down at the sound of a familiar voice, the discomfiting vibration fading away. "Tag," he answers Doug, grinning fangily downward. "When everything went all Jax-art I wanted them to change colours with everything else. So I asked him to dye 'em for me. How's tricks?" His smile is broad, and he's starting to lick chocolate off his lips, shake chocolate off his wings like a dog coming in from the rain. It shakes off easily; he stoops to start coming /down/ when that second voice arrives. There's a distinctive moment, briefly, of habitual tensing, easy to catch -- a guardedness that prickles up through his posture, not malicious so much as just wary-ready. It snaps back into amiable relaxation just as soon as it came. "Holy shit yeah. Of course you can. Man that's /so/ much better than throwing rocks like that asshole five minutes ago." He hops back up the way he just started to climb down, wings flaring out wide again. "Though I don't know, just standing here I see a whole lot of gorgeous coming through. New York's /pretty/ full of it." "He does good work," Doug says, tipping his head to grin up at Dusk. "I mean, the mural on the roof is pretty awesome, but I didn't know he did..." he gestures at the artwork. "It suits you." The question gets a wrinkle of his nose. "Same old, same old," he says lightly. "Got an idea for a new project, but I'm still fuzzy on the deets. I need to talk to B sometime when it's not work hours." He shifts his backpack as Dusk begins to come down, and glances over his shoulder when a new voice sounds off. His reaction is less guarded, although he gives the woman a long look before he offers a friendly smile. "He's pretty even without the art," he assures her, and steps back to clear the frame. When Dusk mentions the rock-thrower, he frowns and looks out into the dark, chocolatey park for a long moment before he looks back to grin at Dusk. "Well, /something/ in New York is full of it, at least," he teases. Maya wriggles excitedly when this permission is granted. She scritches at her dog's head a few more times, opening the fence to come through and pulling her phone out of her pocket. "Oh, I don't doubt it. But that silhouette against the buildings -- and those wing are /so/ impressive." She leans back against the fence, lifting her phone to snap off a /few/ pictures of Dusk backlit against the nighttime sky. "How anyone could throw /rocks/ at you -- people are so ignorant sometimes." Her head shakes, and she loops Ratri's leash around her wrist as the dog starts to try to bound off and make new /friends/ once they're inside the fence. Her faint blush deepens at the gorgeous comments. "Oh -- there's gorgeous everywhere, I agree." Her eyes slip over Dusk, and then to the ground. "It's gotten hard to see, here and there. But I think we're finding our feet again. -- What sort of project?" It's a bright curiosity, more than a polite one. Maybe even nosy, but a /cheerful/ sort of nosy. "He just likes colouring on anything, I think." Dusk drops into a gargoyle crouch, wings spread out wide, as Maya takes pictures. Rises back up for the last few, still silhouetted against the backdrop of city buildings. Once Maya is done her clicking he /keeps/ his wings flared, beating to first rise higher and then glide downwards, stirring up a cold-damp chocolate-scented draft as he alights beside her and Ratri. He drops a hand, scritching the dog on the head. "I get it a lot, actually. These wings scream /demon/ a lot more often than angel." He shakes his wings clean of chocolate again, tongue swiping against lips first, fangs second, cleaning chocolate off of them. "New project? Is it as crazy as the rest of the shit that happens over at Stark? Can you spill or is it top-secret NDA stuff?" "Well, he's good at it," Doug says of Tag, hooking a thumb in the strap of his bag and falling silent as the picture-taking starts. He holds out his hand, fingers-first, when Ratri comes near to him. Once she's had a good sniff, he ruffs fingers through the scruff of her neck, and lifts a shoulder at the conversation. "Those people are jerks," he says of rock-throwers. "You're definitely no /angel/, but 'demon' is really sort of pushing it." He chuckles, and straightens back up to watch Dusk's glide with a small catch of his breath. "Oh, wow. That...if you got a picture of that, I totally want one," he says to Maya. "I'll give you my email." Questions about his project get a small blush, and the blonde hunches his shoulders. "It's nothing for work," Doug says to Dusk. "Just a bit of a vanity project inspired by something I got to play with the other night." He raises a hand to wriggle fingers at his eyes. "Gonna try to modify some Google glasses, when I can get my hands on a pair." "You work /at/ Stark? That has to be an interesting job." Maya's expression doesn't show any signs of getting any /less/ lit up. Not as she looks at Doug and not as she looks at Dusk and not as she returns to petting Ratri, who is wriggling eagerly at all this attention with her tail wagging so fast it is practically becoming weaponized. She doesn't put her phone away until Dusk has landed, nodding at Doug when he asks for pictures. "If -- that's alright with you, of course?" Her brows lift to Dusk. "And if you give me an email. I can send right now before I /forget. I'm terribly absent-minded sometimes. Especially around pretty-things." She gets her phone right back /out/ almost as soon as she's put it away. "So -- modify glasses? You do what, like, an engineer then? What were you playing with?" Her eyes are drifting away, though, raking over Dusk's colourful wings with a definite note more colour climbing into her cheeks. "I'm not sure I'd lean demon or angel," she agrees with Doug. "But why does it need to be either? It's beautiful all in itself." "Send away. We're neighbors it's not like he doesn't get to see these all the time. He can take all the pictures he wants." Dusk stretches his wings back out, brushing one against Doug's back lightly before folding them in again. His fanged teeth flash towards the other man in a quick grin. "Bet you love getting your hands on a pair." His wings roll, stretching and settling again. "/Crazy-interesting/, from what I've heard." His smile returns at the compliment to his wings. "Doesn't really have to be anything. They just -- sometimes tend to scare people off. Gotta admit, I'm -- pretty glad you're not running." "Yeah, I'm an intern," Doug says to Maya, lifting his chin and grinning widely. "And 'interesting' doesn't even begin to cover it. It's about as crazy as anything you've heard about it." He chuckles, stepping back a bit. "I could have been taking pictures?" he asks, lifting his eyebrows at Dusk as he leans into that wing-brush. "I will definitely make a note." He digs in a pocket of his laptop bag, and comes up with a business card that he hands over to Maya. It has his name and email on it, along with a non-Stark-related website. "Oh, man. I would love to get my hands on a pair of those glasses. I'm not a super engineer like some of my friends, but I can probably do a lot just with the software. I'm thinking how to upload Warlock into a pair." Maya's question gets a grin, and a lift of his shoulder. "I met a woman the other night who had a pair she'd designed herself. She let me play around with them, and now I want a pair." He grins at Dusk. "Think about it. A pair of glasses that can examine and analyze what you're looking at and put its findings right in front of your eye." His eyes widen, and he looks off to one side thoughtfully, his grin turning a bit wolf-like. "Yeah. I want to make those." Maya reaches to take the business card, looking over it and immediately swiping open her phone to send the lot of Dusk-photographs to the listed email. "Warlock? What's warlock? -- There, I sent you the pictures." She pockets the card as soon as the email is sent, pocketing the phone along with it. "I'm nothing special when it comes to all that. I mean, not clueless but -- I certainly couldn't engineer you -- " She wiggles her fingers in the direction of Doug's eyes. /Her/ eyes lift towards Dusk's smile, her hand absently winding Ratri's leash a little bit closer. "-- Nooot running," she assures. "Well. Not away, anyhow." "Of course you could've been taking pictures," Dusk assures Doug. "C'mon, in all the time you've known me, have you noticed even the /slightest/ inkling of /shame/? You could've been taking pictures and plastering them all over the web. Just so long as I got a cut of the profits. I got rent to pay, after all. -- I would love the /hell/ out of Google glasses but they're expensive as fuck," he laments. "I keep hoping you Stark boys will nepotize me and hook me up with awesome shit but no dice yet. His smile flashes back, brighter, sharp and fangy when Maya says she's not running. His wing curls back outward, reaching to touch a light brush of contact against the woman's arm. One sharp-long thumbclaw flicks up to the other side of the park, towards the Lofts building just across the street. "My apartment's just there," he offers, cheerfully. "/That's/ not a far run." "Yeah, it's kind of a pipe dream," Doug says, wrinkling his nose at Dusk. "I'm a long way from being able to procure a pair. But some day...." He shakes his head at Dusk's hope, and chuckles. "And I am /so/ not in the loop for smuggling you cool tech," he says. "I'm still on the list to borrow one of the fancy computers. The perils of being an intern." He doesn't sound overly bothered by it, though. "Oh, Warlock is a program I created," he explains to Maya. "He's sort of a...well, technically, he's an A.I., but he still needs some tweaking." The banter between the other two gets a small smile, and Doug takes a step backwards. "I should probably get home myself," he says. "The cats are probably starving by now. Thanks for the pictures," he says to Maya, bobbing his head. "I really appreciate it." He lifts a hand in a wave as he begins to turn to head towards the Lofts. "See you later!" And then he's off -- not running, exactly, but making pretty good time for a walk. "No shame," Maya agrees when Dusk suggests this -- but it's with a warm laugh, and a lean inwards into his colourful wing. "A.I.? That kind of thing is so fascinating." Though Doug is hurrying off, then, and she lifts her hand to wave cheerfully. "Goodnight! Enjoy the --" She just waves a hand to the chocolate rain all around rather than finishing this sentence, and drops her hand back down to Ratri's head afterwards. She looks down towards the still tail-wagging dog. Looks /over/ towards the Lofts building. "-- Is your building dog-friendly?" she wonders, and then starts to answer the question herself -- already kind of /optimistic/ about it: "I think I've met some of your neighbors with a dog, no? But Ratri is bigger." "Well. When you /do/ get in on the loop you should totally hook me up. Or hell maybe I should just apply there some day. I mean they're clearly not bigots." Dusk looks, for a moment, contemplative of this potential course of action. His other wing extends, touching lightly against Doug's shoulder in farewell. "Night, man!" It folds back in tightly as the other man heads off. His smile brightens warmly, wing curling in snugger around Maya when she leans in. He starts to head off towards the Lofts, albeit at a much slower pace than Doug. "-- Oh, man. Don't worry. /She's/ a sweetheart. They've had to put up with /me/ for years."