ArchivedLogs:Love and Money

Love and Money
Dramatis Personae Isra, Shane, Tag
In Absentia	2016-01-03 "{People may just have to drink coffee somewhere else.}"
Location <NYC> {Funhaus} - Harbor Commons - Lower East Side
The house might have started out looking capacious and respectable, but it has since moved through various incarnations, always colorful, but never colorful the same way for longer than a few days. There is little in the way of what most people would call furniture: a sectional couch buried in fluffy cushions, three bean bags of varying sizes, a scattering of bookshelves, what looks like a human-scale cat tree in one corner, and a low, square table surrounded by zafus. The floor plan is largely open, criss-crossed by rope bridges linking small elevated platforms to the landing of the second storey, beyond which lie the bedrooms. The kitchen is separated from the living room only by a long counter, lined with stools. Even the appliances are decked out in unexpected hues, edged with designs that change on a daily basis. A row of tins and jars runs the length of the breakfast counter, none of which match and all of which bear brightly colored text describing their contents: teas, coffees, mates, and various herbal blends. New Year, new Funhaus! The walls are a riot of dazzling neon fireworks over a fantastic night-time cityscape of spires and domes. The furniture is mostly solid, bright colors this time, marigold and magenta and aqua and mint. On this lazy, chilly Sunday afternoon, there's music coming from the living room stereo system: MIKA's Promised Land. Wearing a blue empire waist sun dress with magenta flowers, his hair hanging down in rainbow tresses over his shoulder Tag is bopping along with the chipper tune. "How could you break my heart? Already played my part," he sings along softly stepping back to consider his work in progress, "I kept my promise, man, show me the Promised Land!" Over on the cat tree, one lean blue sharkpup is lounging, draped through a tunnel and oozed down onto the platform below it, where his laptop is perched. Shane isn't really paying /much/ attention to his laptop screen, though, intermittently looking at it but mostly watching Tag work. Or maybe napping. His eyes are sometimes closed. Sometimes. "{... not understand,}" he finally volunteers in halting Mandarin, his accent good but his word choice fumbling. "{Song about what.} Love or money. Fucking weird." Perched on a jet-black poof in the very center of the living room, completely nude and motionless, Isra looks not a little like a modern gargoyle statue. That impression may have gotten across even stronger for the brief time that Tag had returned her skin to its natural slate gray, but now that he has decorated her in rippling waves of purple and blue, she at least looks like a /colorful/ statue. She has a deep purple dip-dyed sarong pooled at her feet in the even that she should suddenly require some modest. Her wings extend mantle out, not quite half extended, like a bird sunning itself. Her ears swivel at Shane's voice, and she arches an eyebrow ridge. "{Do I have to choose one?}" she asks in gruff, Argentine Spanish, the corner of her mouth quirking with amusement. The cobalt blue of Isra's wings shifts and turns under Tag's gaze, gaining texture and depth until it looks like rippling water, cresting into roiling waves at reguar intervals. "{Love,}" he replies in smooth Mandarin with a north Chinese twang, signing the word simultaneously, "{/and/ money.}" He...doesn't know /that/ sign, but rubs his thumb over index and middle fingers to indicate it all the same. "{It's about both!}" And here he switches to very halting Spanish, "{He ask about song. It's a...break-up song, break up, with} Capitalism. {See this part...}" He waits a few beats and joins in at the next verse, "We got done running from the devil, but the devil was you; every time I see the light, I'm falling deeper in debt." "{Love and money,}" Shane echoes this more for practice than anything else, nodding to himself as he repeats these words. But then grins, bright and toothy as his head drops down to rest on one arm. "{Shiiiit,}" /this/ is in an amused drawl of Vietnamese before he switches over to Spanish, too, "{-- I mean, hell, yeah, fuck capitalism, why aren't there more songs about that. We're /all/ in /that/ goddamn abusive relationship.}" His grin hasn't faded, really, though his eyes close again along with a small flutter of gills as he answers Isra: "{Don't have to choose, really. Simple for me, /I'm/ fresh out of both.}" Isra's ears press back nearly flat against her skull. "{Capitalism, sometimes very hard to dump,}" she says, her voice neutral and her expression placid, though the tip of her tail twitches fast. A growl rumbles deep in her chest and she stretches one wing out toward Shane, running the shortest phalanx of its first finger over his spiny head. "{You still have love, even if heart broken. Money we can work on.}" Tag bites his lower lip and pauses in his work when Isra moves her wing. "{I keep want to ask, about} Evolve. {Then I think, maybe make you more sad, stress. So I don't.}" He plucks at the skirt of his dress and comes around Isra's other wing, leaning on it lightly. "{But you sad and stress anyway so...do you have, plans? For open back up?}" Shane's eyes stay closed, though the fluttering of his gills only increases, quick and agitated all down his sides. His head tips up, pressing lightly in against Isra's talon before turning to close his teeth against it in a slow grind. Crrrrk. For a time he just gnaws, a small growl in his chest. Eventually he releases Isra's claw to drop his head back down, though. "{Plans were never really /my/ forte, he was always...}" He trails off, his voice losings itself in a small flutter. Hitch. His head shakes. "{Honestly if I weren't living in a hippie commune right now I wouldn't be fucking /eating/, I don't know how I'm going to pay that place's goddamn mortgage. People may just have to drink coffee somewhere else.}" Isra endures the chewing without complaint, and when freed again she rubs the blunt knuckle the phalanx into Shane's shoulders. "{No one can ever replace him. But I /can/ help you to plan.}" She finally withdraws her wing, relaxing it back to the position it had held before. "{If you want it. You don't have to put yourself through all of that--as you said, people can drink their coffee elsewhere.}" Tag's fuschia eyebrows raise up at Isra's words. "{Evolve not /just/ a place people can drink coffee,}" he protests, looking down. He runs a hand over Isra's wing, adding some misty white spindrift to a wavecrest. "{It...safe place. More safe? Good place, for friends, for er...community.}" His Spanish is clearly not up to the task of what he wants to express, but he keeps at it. "{People would help to pay, /many/ people. To have it again. You can have a uh...} fundraiser." Shane tips his cheek to its side, eye cracking open to shoot a /thin/ slice of teeth bared grin towards Isra. "{Yeah. We can just drink ours at /home/.}" He exhales sharply, claws digging down against the surface of the platform he lies on. "{Mutant coffee fundraiser. There's a worthy cause. Hive'd be our number one donor.}" "{Or Montagues.}" Isra answers his grin with a fangy smile of her own. "{But I do like my own coffee, too.}" She squeezes down on Tag's shoulder gently with the wing mantled over him. "{I agree, though. Many people would donate, and even if most don't have much to give, it will add up.}" Tag is bouncing kind of restlessly under Isra's wing, and finally peels away, adding color to the floor and walls as he goes. "{Could make it a /fun/ thing, maybe? Get people excited.}" He drifts over to the cat tree and leans against Shane's platform. "{If you need more big place, can use the warehouse, I bought, for art. In Brooklyn.}" Shane oozes down out of the cat-tree tunnel, sitting up on the ledge now to dangle his legs down over its edge. "{... fun.}" He says this word with a deep furrow of his ridged brows, eyes shifting to Isra and then to Tag. There's less flippancy in his tone than there had been before when he answers, though. "{You really think people would go for that? I mean. I haven't --}" He grimaces as he looks down at his computer, "{/actually/ looked at finances lately but there's no way in hell Evolve's pulling /itself/ out of its hole. But. With some help. Maybe. Maybe...}" "{I really do,}" Isra replies, her dual voice resonant and entirely serious. She stretches out her wings and settles them back in across her shoulders. "{I think, it will take a lot of work. Planning, advertising, finding donors of both skill and material /for/ the event itself. But yes, I think so.} Tag nods...more times than he really needs to. "{The outbreak, people have been stuck at home, and even after, many places slow to open back up. Some not at all. I think, people want to go out, do things. See friends again.}" The platform under Shane is slowly changing colors, from royal purple "{This way, can do it for a cause."} "{Skill.}" Shane flexes his toes thoughtfully, looking down at his claws. Then up, at Isra's wings. "{How big is that warehouse of yours?}" And, as an afterthought: "{How /sturdy/ is that warehouse of yours?}" Isra rises, pulling the sarong with her to wrap around her waist. "{You have an idea, I take it.}" It does not sound in the least like a question. Tag tilts his head at Shane quizzically. The flowers on his dress have multiplied and changed in both color and shape, so that the skirt looks like a field of fantasy wildflowers. "{About...I'm not good with big numbers in Spanish,}" he says, then switches to Mandarin, "{Just under 30,000 square feet; not huge, but not small, either. And it survived hurricane Sandy plus two zombie apocalypses, so...}" His skinny shoulders hitch up, but he wears a small, hopeful smile. "{We can go out and take a look if you like.}" Then, back to Spanish, "{What you think do?}" Shane's claws drum against the platform, his head bobbing slowly. "{I think people could use some fun.}" He answers this slowly, kind of cautious. "{And I think if I want to keep Evolve's doors open it's going to take some fighting.}" Very, very tentatively, a small smile. "{So I'm thinking maybe both.}"