ArchivedLogs:Knock Your Socks Off

Knock Your Socks Off
Dramatis Personae Hive, Micah, Jim, Dusk, Melinda
In Absentia	24 February 2014 Melinda's birthday!
Location <NYC> 403 {Geekhaus} - Village Lofts - East Village
There's kind of a college-dorm feel to this place, though some of its occupants have left college behind. Entering the apartment finds visitors greeted by the perpetually messy living room, a mismatched assortment of couches and chairs (and milk crates) surrounding the wide table in the center. The wall holds a range of posters; some political, some sporty, some from video games, and a string of white lights strung over the kitchen doorway might be a holdover from Christmas. A widescreen television stands against the wall opposite the couch, shelving beside it holding a host of video games from different consoles. More shelving beside the windows on the far wall carries stacks of board games, as well as sourcebooks from various RPGs. The kitchen adjacent is just as cluttered, its table unfit for eating due to its perpetual covering of books, papers, cereal boxes, projects; the fridge is usually sparsely populated. Ketchup. Beer. Not a lot of food. There are two bedrooms here and one bathroom situated between them, split between the three people who live here. More recently the apartment has become littered with /stars/ -- stained glass stars catching light in the windows, star-mobiles swinging from the ceiling, glowing ones stuck to the walls, bright metal ones and cheap plastic ones and glittering star-shaped rocks, stars of every color and make scattered about the place to give it a rather ridiculous amount of kitschy cheer. The stars may have disappeared from the city outside, but Geekhaus has still undergone a very starry makeover; the entire apartment is brightly colorful. In some places it glitters, in other places it /shines/; a strand of multicolored star-shaped string lights has joined the perma-Christmas-lights strung up between living room and kitchen. There's a pair of squishy pastel-colored star-shaped throw pillows on the couch. A tiny star-chew toy Alanna is wrestling with on the floor. There is some evidence that they have been preparing for Guests of some nature, in that the living room table has been cleaned off! And the floor even swept. The kitchen table is still pretty much a cluttered mess but you can't win them all. Hive is not helping with the cleaning. Maybe he was at some point but now he is not. He's dressed as tattered-bland as ever -- faded fraying jeans, worn old socks with holes in the toes, Cornell sweatshirt too baggy on his thin frame, deep red fleecey-soft cap with gold Theta Tau embroidered on its front pulled down low on his head. He's tucked himself into the side of the couch, laptop on the table in front of him, only one of its usual extra monitors hooked up to it. One of the Commons houses up on its screen -- though working is going excessively slowly, at the moment, the unsteadiness of his hand not entirely cooperating with the mouse movements he wants to be making. The house smells like food, too. Warm and rich with herby smells of basil and tomatoes, ground beef, Italian sausage. The oven is on at the moment, raising the temperature in the kitchen a few degrees. Micah arrives bearing gifts in the form of baked goods! Baked goods that /Jax/ made, never fear. With a cake container in one hand full of chai spice cake and a giant tin of snickerdoodles in the other hand, he is left to thud a foot against the door in request for entrance. Thud. Thud. << I have sugar and my hands are full, >> comes as a helpful announcement. His hair looks like he may have spent a moment combing it before he came over (for once), though his outfit remains entirely casual: black T-shirt with a stylised Serenity flying through a Starry Night sky on it over an aubergine henley, faded blue jeans, and black socks decorated in constellation patterns. Jim is already here. Maybe he even helped clean a tiny bit here or there, but mostly to use the freaking shower so he's not tromping hobo-smell all over the place. Don't look - he's even shaved. And done up that last troublesome button on a clean, if threadbare, green button-up shirt. He's currently coming out of the bathroom, toweling off his overgrown hair on the way past the couch to lean all drippy over Hive's shoulder. PEER. DRIP DRIP - oh the door. He branches off to go let Micah in. In that he... opens the door. And GAZES out at him like a sinister butler, all leafy and barky-skinned at the edges. Sniff. Sniff. He sloooowly steps back from the door, "Jax?" He asks. Because he recognizes that sort of food ANYWHERE. Also, "How's it." Dusk pokes his head out of the kitchen at the sound of the thudding, peering towards the door. He still has a container of Lysol wipes in hand -- see, he's being helpful too! -- and is otherwise just as casual as he ever is, in that he is in jeans and no shirt and no shoes. "Heyyyy. Look there's even space on the counter!" He sounds so /proud/ to say so. Like maybe he deserves a cookie just for that. Melinda is coming down the hall from the elevator around the time Micah is banging on the door - but she doesn't rush to catch up. She has a small shopping bag in one hand while the other is keeping her purse down against her side. She's bundled up against the cold in a blue wool coat that hangs down around her knees, a fluffy green scarf around her neck and a purple slouchy hat on her head. She smiles as she trundles, grinning a little at Micah, adding a little bit of an /almost/ roll of her eyes at the sound of Jim's greeting. "Ah, don't close the door yet," she calls out. Coming! "He doesn't look anything /like/ Jax s'wrong with you." Hive narrows his eyes towards the door, briefly. "Two eyes. Easy to tell them apart. -- Ohhh there's the. Birth. Person." << Dusk's still cleaning, >> he informs -- kind of Melinda, kind of just the apartment at large, bludgeon-heavy words lapsing back into mental rather than audible speech as his eyes shift back towards the screen. "Hi, Jim!" Micah chirps as he makes his way in the door. "Yes, Jax made the goodies. Not t'worry, I wouldn't subject y'all t'my bakin'. He's gonna drop in late once he gets off work at the studio." He sort of waves...the cookie tin by way of greeting Hive and Dusk. "Hey, folks! Oh, counter space. That's a blessin'. Let me put this stuff down." The containers of sweets find their landing spot safely, just in time for Melinda to arrive. "Hi, Mel! There's cake an' cookies! Jax made 'em. Happy birthday!" He hurries back to the door to take the shopping bag from Mel so that she can get out of her winter layers without worrying about the burden. "Kitchen bag or other kind of bag?" he asks rather than peeking at the contents. "S'harder to count the legs," Jim grouses, hip-bumping the door wider once Micah passes by to keep it open for Melinda. It's a trap. Soon as she's heading through the door, his hands are falling upon her to mug her of her winter apparel. He at least tries not to full nelson her in the process, "You have work t'day?" "/Heyyy/." Dusk is brighter still when Melinda arrives, flashing a toothy smile towards her though it comes with a brief-faint pang of guilt as his eyes flick towards Hive << -- oh shit still on my to-tell list -- >> that he shakes off quickly. "/Mel/ happy birthday! Apparently there's cake and cookies. -- Oh my god you don't need to check the /legs/. /Ten/ fingers, guys. He's got /ten/ fingers. This isn't rocket science." He finishes wiping down the counter, tossing the wipe in the trash and stowing the container beneath the sink. "Flicker's gonna be here when he's done class, too. Or studying or. Some -- college. Thing. I don't know what those productive people get up to all day." Melinda pauses in the doorway to receive the greeting of the mind, her brows quirking visibly with a little bit of amusement. "Am I too early? I can leave and ... well, ride the elevator for a while." She smiles at Micah's greeting, handing over the bag as she starts unbundling -- and is helped by Jim. "Um. Not tonight. Handled the early shift." She tries to keep a straight face during this mugging, thinking that he hasn't been this ready to disrobe her in months. "Oh ... wow. It looks amazing in here." Her attention is on the decorations, but she does notice the cleanliness. "You gotta admit it can be hard to tell." Hive slouches down further in his seat. "They're both so. Fucking -- /Southern/." His eyes slant over towards the doorway, watching Mel and Jim for a second before returning to his screen again. "Boring fucking elevator. Way more interesting in here." On the table, his phone's alarm buzzes; he fumbles at it for a moment to swipe it off, pushing himself slowly to his feet to make his way shakily towards the kitchen. "Mostly Flicker's doing." He waves a hand at the decorations. "Kinda. Cleaned the fuck up on that whole. Star -- thing this. This past -- this past." "Might be hard t'tell if you're...workin' with your eyes closed, maybe. Jax is taller. An' 'is hair's usually in /several/ colours. Don't even gotta work your way down t'countin' appendages." Micah shakes his head, giggling at this odd turn of conversation. "Everythin's starry lately. S'been amazin' in the /world/. Shane's got a huge bag fulla things, too, an' Spence'n B got a whole other one. S'too bad it faded out already." He carries the bag to the kitchen, presuming the counter to be an appropriate place for it, as well. "An' you should be comin' in an' havin' a seat, Mel. No need t'pretend you've only seen this place /clean/ before." << -weekend. >> Jim supplies at Hive, his mind a solid-rooted, if internalized and distracted presence. Draping Melinda's earthly winter belongings over an arm like slain animal, he happens to position himself halfway between Hive's route from couch to kitchen, an elbow cocked at an angle that it could be used like any other piece of furniture to regain balance on. He's looking elsewhere though, frowning out amongst the STARS, "You should see it downstairs. Lotta the sewer folk were in on it; free entertainment's worth more than gold. After all the hard knocks they been getting up to now, I ain't complaining." There's even a silent-pleasant inner squirm that, embarrassing or not, he's been guilty of losing a FAIR number of hours pursuing star-leads across the city. From a back pocket he pulls out his favorite prize - a old-school wild west SHERIFF badge, and shimmers it at the room frownily. "Jax wears way tighter pants," Dusk so-helpfully supplies, right over Micah's addition to this conversation. "-- Or way looser ones I swear you can fit two of him in those --" His hands flare out wide(-wide-wide) to describe the enormous circumference of just /one/ leg of old-school JNCO jeans. "I just go by the pants. /His/ are sensible." He flicks a wing towards Micah's jeans in affirmation of this point, wing absently tucking up against Hive's shoulder in passing to add one more bolstering post to his path towards the kitchen. "-- Oh/shit/." He grins at the sheriff's badge, eyes widening. "Someone brought the /law/ down on us. And we haven't even /started/ the party yet, Mel! -- B was cheating," he adds with an exaggerated /huff/. "He had robots searching for him." "I brought socks," Melinda eventually notes to Micah when she finishes taking in all the splendid stars. "I was just going to bring some comfy ones for me, but then I figured it'd be weird if I were wearing special socks and everyone else wasn't, so I brought enough socks for everyone." Under the winter wrapping, Mel is wearing a loose sweater in lilac purple that drapes across her belly easily enough, with green leggings underneath. Her socks are currently slim and not all that warm, but important for fitting into her winter boots, which has been a challenge with the way her feet have taken up just being mildly swollen all the time. She watches the buzz of activity for a moment, pleased, until Hive's movements catch her eye. There isn't a demanding question in her mind, but a quiet concern, and an understanding that he's worse, but utterly clueless as to what that is. Upon Micah's prompting, she gives a little nod and heads for the couch, sitting in the middle. << I'll have to remember to thank Flicker when he gets back. >> "The pants are usually a giveaway," Hive acknowledges. His path wends from one support post to the next, leaning up against the back of Dusk's armchair, against Jim's elbow, against Dusk's wing, against the wall, before he makes it properly to the kitchen. He tugs oven mitts on, opening up the oven to scowl into it; it has two covered casserole pans inside, both of which he removes the foil coverings from before shutting the oven door again. He resets the timer on his phone, tugging out a chair from the kitchen table to sit by the oven instead. "-- All my socks have holes. Almost all. Wait. Does that mean you brought /me/ birthday socks for your birthday? I didn't get. I didn't get a." An image of a wrapped present (in red-and-green Christmassy wrapping paper a silver bow on top) thunks into everyone's minds. "Fff law," he scoffs at the badge, "he's a fake. Just asked him to put on the. Cop-uniform. So he could be Mel's birthday stripper." "Hey, who /doesn't/ like an excuse t'rabbit all over the city pickin' up free shinies?" Micah grins a bright, lopsided kind of grin at Jim's badge. "Wardrobe's also kinda a dead giveaway, yeah." A faint pink blush dusts across his cheeks at the ongoing attention to his person. "Think everybody had their own way of cheatin'. Weren't y'all usin' Flicker's ability t'get t'yours? Prob'ly me'n Jax'n Shane were the only group /not/ usin' some kinda enhanced methodology. Then Jax an' I were mostly workin' an' Shane got arrested, so. Preeetty sure y'all beat us fair good on sheer numbers located." Mel's revelation of the bag's contents earns a chuckle. "Oh, so I better get the bag back outta the kitchen 'fore one of these bachelors decides it's cookin' goods, then." He collects the bag, moving into the living room to return it into Mel's care before claiming a seat on the couch next to her. Thunk. << Present. >> "For fuck's sake, you people. Just do a fucking tat-check." Jim gruffs like he's disgusted no one else /knows/ this one. And he raises one finger at the ROOM like 'observe i got this' - and turns a shrewd eye on Micah, "How many tats you got." This is v. important. Once Hive has passed by, he's moving on to wherever visitor coats go. Possibly there's a coat-chair shit gets piled on, "Always trying to get my fucking pants off... - what kind of socks are we talking about, you bring us all your own lady socks or'd you go out and /buy/ ... fucking... socks. You know what kind of hell roots play on socks?" He's thinking of hose. And garters. On tree-trunk legs. << god save me. >> "Wait, Shane got arrested? What'd Shane get arrested for?" "Mmm." Dusk's eyes are raking down over Micah in intense appraisal. "Jax can /hide/ the ink, though, Jim. Can't fake growing new appendages. Or, oh, piercings could be a better check, you can feel those too." One wing stretches out to curl around Micah when he returns to the living room, /intercepting/ the other man so that he can -- grope. With wing folded in against Micah's /chest/, because clearly these are the first piercings he spot-checks for. "Though," he allows afterwards, "I guess you can take piercings out. Temporarily. -- And Flicker just used /himself/ that's totally different than using robots." He leaves off his groping to flop down across his armchair, wings draping down over one arm while his legs hook over the other. His head tips back to peer towards the kitchen, keeping an absent eye on Hive. "Bachelor pff I'll have you know," he informs Micah with feigned offense, "that tonight's dinner is totally /home-cooked/. Which happens just about never so you should like. Take a fucking picture or something," he adds to Mel. "Mark it on the calendar for posterity." "I got cheap, warm socks for everyone." << I'd say I'll take them home with me, to alleviate the whole present issue, but if you really don't have any without holes, then you can probably keep as many as you want. Take Jim's, apparently. And please, don't get me presents. I'm too old for that shit. >> The conversation causes more furrows in Melinda's brow, turning to stare at Micah as he gets groped, lips pursed, eyeing him for information. "And please, no birthday strippers. I'm unfortunately horny enough as it is." Yep, the whole room can enjoy that tidbit of information. When Micah finally reaches the couch, she reaches out and pulls out the socks, most of them cotton knit in an assortment of sizes and colors. She places them on the cushion beside for people to grab. "Home cooked? It smells amazing already." The home-cooked part warms a quiet place inside her. "Hey I can pretty much assure you Dusk's got no problem with horny. He makes a shitty birthday stripper though because he wanders around without clothes all the time /anyway/. S'got nothing we all haven't already seen." Hive leans forward in his chair, slouching in to rest his head against the kitchen counter. "I want blue. Socks. Is there blue. -- Shane got arrested because he's a goddamn punk, the fuck's up with you and him lately anyway, Micah? -- Wait, we did decide this one's Micah, right?" There's a small mental NUDGE at Micah's mind. Like Hive is /checking/. "-- Don't worry," he adds to the mention of dinner being home-cooked. "Dusk didn't really touch it." "Um...none?" Micah answers Jim's ink question, somehow making the statement sound a bit questioning, itself. He also has no piercings for Dusk to /palpate/, though his blush takes on rapidly reddening hues in response. "The fact that you're tellin' folks t'mark the calendar 'bout y'all home-cookin' /kinda/ proves my point," he points out with a smirk. "An' Hive can totally take m'socks if all of his are holey. Holey socks are sad. 'Sides, mine are already thematic." The toes of his foot /capable/ of wiggling do so, making the little stars on his socks dance. The talk of strippers and horniness does his level of /red/ no favours. "Shane got arrested for shopliftin', 'cept he wasn't. Some lady who objected t'his /existin'/ in the store planted CDs in 'is bag. He didn't do nothin'." This last comes in answer to Hive's punk comment, a little shake of his head in time. "How d'you mean, what's up?" "Dunno," Jim is eyeing Micah as though he /hadn't/ just helpfully answered like a good boy, "We might never know. I'm not frisking anyone for body-mods." He is /ignoring/ all the groping and horny talk to lean over to riffle through the socks in search of a blue pair. Cramming a warm brown pair into a shirt pocket - he'll take a pair. Even if he's silently planning to give it to someone who might have better use for it in the sewers. "We arrest everyone for being a punk there's not gonna be one of us left." He wanders off towards the kitchen with the blue socks to present them to chef of the day. Kind of just flops them down on Hive's head. "Cept maybe Mel." "Hey I didn't say there was any 'y'all' about the cooking. Hive just gave me a grocery list and I went to the store that was /my/ contribution to dinner and you should all be thankful it ended there." Dusk curls a wing inward, draping it lazily down across his chest like a blanket, head lolling back against the armrest. "Probably doesn't matter if it's Jax or Micah," he finally decides. "They sent a delegate. The other half will be here eventually." His head tips to the side, the smile that he tosses to Melinda crooked and amused. "Pretty sure you're still allowed to be horny." He's idly already considering inviting her to stay over after the rest of the dinner-party has ended. "-- Wait, he wasn't /really/ shoplifting? I thought this was just some kind of stupid teenager thing." "The difficulty lies in doing anything about it," Melinda eyes Dusk, her head shaking slowly. Her attention drifts back to the discussion of Shane, growing uneasy. "That's bullshit. I mean, I know Shane likes to pull some stupid shit sometimes. He is a teenager, but shoplifting? What the hell." She wonders briefly if it's because he gave up his job and ran out of money, but knows the thought is illogical and pushes it aside. "Yeah, I probably won't get arrested any time soon, so let me know what to pawn in order to post you guys' bail when you need it." She takes a pair of orange and white striped socks and starts to slide them onto her feet, the belly getting in the way of bending over, so she has to do it a little sideways. "No, he wasn't really shoplifting. Some douchecanoe dropped shit into his bag to get him busted /for/ shoplifting. He was being blue. -- Why can't," Hive lifts his head from where he's been slumped against the counter, "you do anything about it that sounds boring as fuck. I mean, if it's just a question of physical logistics I'm pretty sure Dusk could write you a freaking -- dissertation on. The different configurations you can." His alarm goes off again, and he frowns at it, pushing himself slowly back to his feet and fumbling one oven mitt on -- the second one he drops on the floor when he tries to put it on. Together with the pair of socks from off his head. He crouches, picking up the socks first to give them a puzzled look and then -- just fumbling the oven mitt again. "I mean," he clarifies for Micah from his CRANKY position wrestling with the mitts on the kitchen floor, "that he's been /exceptionally/ fucking /teenagery/ lately." "Seriously, no friskin' necessary. Ain't nothin' t'find." Micah's head ducks slightly, the tips of his ears burning hot by this point. "Great...now we've turned into the Married Couple Unit for you, too?" he half-jokes at Dusk's 'representative' and 'half' comments. "We got the lawyers as was helpin' with Dusk an' Jax on it now. They're s'posed t'be checkin' whatever security footage the store might have, see if it won't exonerate Shane. He says he wasn't even /near/ the CD aisles, an' never touched the things, so any video should be helpful on that front." When the alarm goes off again, he hops up, moving over to assist Hive with retrieving the pans from the oven. "He's been pretty teenagery, yeah. An' I think I tend t'get the brunt of it on account of...well, who /better/ t'pull the 'you don't /understand/ me' card on? Not t'mention that I'm still kinda the New Guy. We've also had some...philosophical disagreements that don't help matters." He tries not to glance over at Mel in time with 'philosophical disagreements', but doesn't fully succeed. "Just can't seem t'win with 'im. If I'm supportive, he thinks I'm not bein' realistic about how harsh the world is on folks with physical mutations. An' he shuts down any hope for...anythin'. I hate t'see 'im limit 'imself the way he does... But then, if I try t'give 'im any practical advice on things, he acts like I'm tellin' 'im I don't think he's good for anythin'." A heavy sigh pushes past his lips. "I can only /hope/ it's a teenager thing." << An' that's why it's a good thing I'm not a parent >> With the kitchen suddenly packing in with people and a hot oven opening, Jim snorts and takes a few steps back to let Micah and Hive wrestle for who gets to deal with dinner. "I dunno if 'just a teenager's' all that accurate. Be weird as shit if a grown-ass /man/ went through half the shit he has and was functioning like everything was normal." Mental churn; considering his empty office. A dead phone. An empty wallet. "For all we fucking know, he's just coming down off god-damn survival mode to scream at the fucking void for a bit." He turns to shout towards the living room, "Good luck finding any my shit to pawn. I got a Mexican and a camera, and I'm gonna be /buried/ with them." "Well, the world is harsh as fucking hell on us and you don't," Dusk answers easily and kind of amused, "Understand him. Kinda hope to God you never have to. -- Jim you're not a fucking Pharaoh we don't /bury/ you with /attendants/." He rolls up into a sitting position, then a standing one, wings flexing at his back. "Difficulty, maybe." His eyes have flicked back over to Melinda again. "But that's not really a /barrier/ just a -- consideration to work with. Oh /man/ I think dinner's ready." He waits for Hot Things to be wrangled out of the oven /before/ going to retrieve dishes to bring to the living room. "Hope you're hungry. There's like. Two enormous lasagnas in there." Melinda catches the glance and purses her lips again, the feeling compounding the other stuff she's feeling. She sure doesn't feel attractive right now, so it's hard to think anyone else would. She takes a deep breath and stuffs down her annoyance at all of those birthing videos she's been watching where a partner seems to be hovering around the pregnant person, lovingly comforting and supporting and all that shit. It's easy enough to focus on Shane's situation, even with the pang of guilt having started this stress with him and Micah. "I... need extensions, or a second person. I don't know. Considerations, yes." She gives Dusk a small smile, her hands sliding over her belly as more talk of Shane's stress gives her pause. "I'm hungry, but I... will probably have to take home leftovers to work on my fair share. Kind of running out of room these days. Tiny meals all day, you know." Hive surrenders the oven mitts to Micah, letting the other man deal with removing hot things from ovens. He gets serving utensils from a drawer, setting them down on the counter as he leans up against it. << Except you are, dude, >> goes to Jim, dryly. "S'all good we got. Those. Fucking." He scrubs a hand against his eyes, mental imagery of tupperware containers crashing into the others' minds. "-- One's meat and one's vegan I'm so -- only vouching for the. Not-hippie one. But Liam swears the hippie -- recipe's." He shakes his head quickly, pushing himself up straighter against the counter. "Right. Food. Let's eat."