ArchivedLogs:Maybe Interesting Times

Maybe Interesting Times
Dramatis Personae Hive, Parley, Shelby	2013-03-10 A moment's respite on the Village Lofts rooftop.
Location <NYC> Village Lofts - Rooftop - East Village
It tends to be windy, up here, but the presence of plastic table and folding chairs suggests that nevertheless building residents occasionally make their way out to this rooftop. With a good view of Tompkins Square Park less than a block away it's a good spot for city-watching. There's a railing around the edge, though it might be possible (if /unwise/) to climb over it to the narrow concrete ledges beyond and from there to the fire escape. Centrally, someone has broken down crates and constructed a small raised-bed garden up here, barren in winter but filled in three other seasons with a small assortment of herbs and vegetables. New York hunkers beneath an only partly sunny sky, piercing through the sooty clouds in occasion silvered spears. The rooftop takes advantage of elevation to catch them, less shadowed by buildings than the sidewalks below, and one short wall has managed to pick up some heat. Parley sits against this wall in a veritable nest of newspapers with an honest to god /paperback/ copy of the 2002 Farmer's Almanac. He has on a pair of jeans, a gray t-shirt and a thick blue and gray flannel that is about five sizes too big for him. All the better to SWIM in. One-handed she may be but that doesn't mean Shelby isn't capable of playing gofer for the twenty-odd people who've turned up in need of assistance. She'd left Xavier's early and run a few errands, mostly fetching extra supplies where things have run out. And now? Now it's time for a break! The girl makes for the rooftop, still in her puffy jacket with one arm empty, her trusty pack o' smokes already out. She's trying to lip a cig out of the pack as she shoulders through the door but it keeps slipping back down to frustrate her. She makes a grumpy sound--but is then distracted by the rustle of paper and sets off to find the source. "...hey? Anyone up here?" Spook! Well no, not spook - Parley's empathy makes it hard to sneak up on him, picking up surface emotions and flashes of sentiment and memory, mostly, though very stark thoughts can sometimes gain clarity. He's one of the less memorable members of the refugee camp, generally spending more time assisting as well, to clarify and streamline some of the more abrasive interactions. That's a /lot/ of people living on top of one another. Volatile is volatile, and volatile is /worse/ when there are mutants that can DO THINGS to the people and things in their environment if they get set off. "--You're Shelby?" His little bit of wall and newspaper ventures. Frustration and alarm quickly fade into a mishmash of curiosity, caution and...oh yeah, she recognizes him. Vaguely. Shelby's grin appears, set slightly lopsided. "Hey, I'm famous. Sweet. Can you gimme a hand?" Literally--she extends the pack of cigarettes and waggles it. "I mean, if you're not like up here trying to hide from /everyone/ including me. But man, I really need a smoke and it's a new pack, so they're not comin' out." Befire Parley can confirm or deny the hiding thing, she drops to the ground cross-legged next to the newspapers, giving them a brief glance before returning to study the refugee. "I don't remember your name." You can recognize a long-timer labrat pretty quickly just by /talking rapidly/ to them; Parley doesn't respond in any manner that could be called /uninviting/, but there are SO MANY WORDS coming out of her face, that he responds easier just by gathering back the newspapers to make a space for her while processing them all. She can have a nest TOO. "There's just so /many/ people downstairs," he admits, holding out a hand to take accept the pack from her. "I come up here sometimes to lessen the bodycount. I'm--." And here would be the reason she doesn't remember his name; he has not been in any hurry to offer it. "-- called Parley. Sometimes." One would think Shelby might be sensitive of that--the sensory overload of going from not free to free. But her mind works much the same way her mouth does. It runs away from her, whoosh. "Crowds kinda make me nervous too, it's like /whoa/, fuck, feels like I can't breathe in all this." So naturally, she ventured out to make certain she couldn't breathe in another way! Teenagers. She is deeply grateful for the intervention with the stubborn tight-pack though, fishing out her lighter while he handles the smokes. "Do you want me to call you Parley," she asks curiously, thumb idly flicking the lighter wheel, "or should I call you something else?" "It's an identity," Parley doesn't handle the pack with a lot of familiarity, but while delicate for the sake of not Breaking Someone's Shit, it's not put out either. He's just... curious. Turns it over, picks at the inner lining of paper, investigates the edges of the box. Eventually, he pick-pick-picks at one of the cigarettes inside and offers them both back at the length of either arm, "Should I call you Shelby? Where are you from?" Shelby is as interested in watching Parley investigate the pack as he is in checking it out. There's bemusement in that study, a mild sort of realization for how isolated he must have been. Her head cocks to the side while she waits to be presented with the prize. "Most names are," she confides, making a joke of it. The cigarette is taken first and popped between her lips, the lighter flicked into life and held to the tip before she reaches for the pack as well. She is presuming he doesn't want one. "Shelby's good, yeah," she says with a great plume of smoke. At least she tilts her head back so it goes up rather than over. In her head, visions of squat suburbs and blinding white-hot sunlight dance. The land around it is flat, red, brown and yellow. "I'm from around. Been damn near everywhere, really. How 'bout you? Oh...uh. I mean. If you wanna talk." Parley remains equally bemused, watching the cigarette lighting with flicks of his eyes between Shelby's face, the end of her smoke, and the lighter. The latter he hesitantly reaches towards, likely not needing any empathic projection to explain his desire to MESS with it. "I think it would be healthy for most of us to talk. Maybe not about," he circles a finger in the air, a universal handsign for /everything/, "but humans are social animals. And inherent of social animals is..." his eyes so slightly smile, even if his mouth does not, "socialization. Where all is 'everywhere'? I mean. If you wanna talk." Did he just mimic Shelby's last portion of words? His tone didn't change, but for a moment it may as well have been a recording. Look, Parley can totally tease. "I'm not a shrink or anything but you maybe noticed, I /like/ to talk," Shelby confides with that gap-toothed grin. The lighter is passed over without hesitation, freeing her up to pluck the cigarette from her lips instead of letting it dangle cowboy-style. "You're kind've a brainiac, huh? Inherent, socialization, so--whoa." Was that a playback? Her eyebrows go up and the grin deepens to dimpled proportions as she studies the other teenager. "Okay, that's cool...oh man, I bet we could have a lot of fun with that...s'that what you do? Mimic people?" The wheels turn. They are impish wheels. "Everywhere is just...I dunno, everywhere. I've been on my own awhile. So I go wherever I end up, y'know?" "Let's say my major talents tend towards communication," likely inspiration for his nomenclature. Parley takes the lighter and turns it over in his hands, thumbs sliding over its edges. "I can channel other people's sentiments. It helps break down language barriers." Flk-flk. He is trying to make the lighter GO. His delicate housepet-soft thumb pads! Why does it not work! "That's a very philosophical state of being; it has an elegant symmetry; to take immediate control in going where you want to go, and the passivity of accepting where ever you find yourself." Flk! Hahah. Parley has made FIRE. He watches its little fragile glow thoughtfully, "Do you like being on your own?" There is something about watching a cat try to work a lighter that is /hilarious/. The amusement bubbles up inside of her, though Shelby does a damned fine job of keeping it from showing on the outside. Out there it's just puff and release, rinse and repeat. "So, like a translator for the inside. So people can't fuck it up with words? That's pretty sweet, shit, we need a lot of that around here." Amusement is tempered with a certain self-aware ruefulness that sends her grin skewing sideways again. "Sometimes it's not so bad. It's kind've like..." Oh hey, inspiration. She waves the cigarette, making lines of smoke in the air. "It's kind of like smoking. Once you get used to it, it's a bitch to stop, even if you want to." "It's useful," Parley admit, finally remembering that maybe he shouldn't burn up all of Shelby's lighter fluid and hands it back. He hands it back kind of underhand, too, down near the ground, like his possession of it was a secret. With a quick peek-scan of the roof neutral. His face lights up so subtly at the comparison - or a ParleyEquivalent of lighting up, which is sort of a face-freeze, with eyes fully open rather than halfmast, "That is a very good way of explaining it." He licks his upper lip -- and then creeeeeps out a hand towards Shelby's cigarette. He's been batting 100 so far in Getting To Explore shit, don't mind his weak grasp of boundaries. "...though with smoking, I think the sentiment is always that people would like to quit, isn't it?" It only takes a moment for Shelby to jump from curiosity to understanding when she gets her lighter back. Oh. /Oh/. Her face twists, the grimace directly tied to a sudden sense of Really Pissed Off before another long drag fixes that problem for her. As she exhales, she easily hands the smoke over--with a precautionary, "Smoking'll kill you, be careful. It's like, worse than heroin." Then she settles back against the wall and turns her face up into the thin spring sunlight. "Not everyone," she admits. "It gets in you. You like the...the ritual, I guess? Y'know. And with moving around, it sure keeps things interesting." Parley carefully takes the cigarette from Shelby, the delicate-papery light weight feel of its body inspiring an odd sort of care, as though handling a baby bird. A babybird that's SMOLDERING. He and Shelby are nesting in a mass of newspapers - well, okay, a few generally tidy stacks set up around Parley - over against the wall that collects the most sunlight. "--though there's a difference maybe between what we like and what we want to like." He says it like an offering? He holds the cigarette in front of his face like a novice, pinching the filter between a thumb and two fingers, and ducks down his head cautiously behind it to kind of... /lip/ at it uncertainly. Inhale? Brow-furrow? "Interesting is a curse, you know. 'Maybe you live in interesting times'..." "Well sure, when you put it like /that/." Shelby is mellow. Melloooooow. It could be that soaking in the sunlight is helping, or Parley's general low-key vibes. More like there's something genuinely serene about catching a breather between lots of busy and lots of busier. She's got her back to the wall, her jacket zipped up; the right arm is empty. "Problem with wanting shit is it gets taken away," she says, rueful observation coupled with a bemused glance at the not-really-smoking Parley. "So you learn to like what you can, y'know? And screw the rest. Just...okay, dude, if you really wanna do this, you gotta keep your mouth around it while you suck in. But you're gonna cough." Yes, she's being a bad influence on the labrat, why do you ask? << It's /may/ you live in interesting times. >> This precedes Hive's actual arrival onto the roof. It doesn't sound heavy-bludgeony like his usual mindvoice, quiet, mellow, although oddly more like a chorus of voices speaking in unison than one single person. A chorus of tired voices. Hive is tired to match when he shoves the roof door open with a shoulder, trudging his way out in ratty faded jeans, rattier sneakers, his beaten-up old jacket unbuttoned over a plain white undershirt. Shoulders slumped. Steps heavy. He's joining the smoking brigade, a cigarette already unlit in his lips and he's scooping a lighter out of a pocket. << See you're meeting the refugees. Been down with the twins? Their room's been commandeered. All our fucking apartments are packed to the gills. Anyway, fuck those people. Who think it's a curse. Normal life is boring as shit. >> Parley is in jeans, gray T, blue and gray over-large flannel that he's swimming in. Loose clothes to fit over his bandages. ohCRAP, when Hive's arrival comes, he drops his hand quickly, scrambling for a half-moment to hide it with his shoulders curling tighter. Then it eases, in degrees, and he lifts the smoke again to his mouth, watching Hive. "Wanting is... dangerous," he agrees, but it's with a thoughtful reservation. "Though I think it's less dangerous than seems. It's like making a wish, isn't it?" He takes a careful, clinical drag off Shelby's cigarette, and does then cough because all that smoke has just collected in his MOUTH and billows out. "You just can't -koff- let anyone know what it is." He is quietly scooting over, closer to Shelby, clearing up subtly a rather /tempting/ open space for Hive to sit? It presses his good shoulder against Shelby, and he asks up at Hive, "How are you feeling?" Accompanied is a soft-touch to the mind, like offering someone a hand to sit down. The comparison gets skewed if you consider the chair being offered is /also/ part of Parley's mind. Shelby suffers a mental perking up when Hive sweeps in. It's a mishmash of concern, pleasure, worry and disgruntlement that she keeps out of her expression--not that it does much good in /this/ company. Jesus, she's thinking, if he feels worse than he looks, how's he upright? "I've been with them since school let out," she points out, "and been running errands today. You don't even wanna know how much toilet paper people are going through. No one's asses are used to real food, it's gross. Wanna sit?" Except it is not ground she pats with her hand but rather her lap--until Parley does his scooting thing and leaves her disappointed and shy of one Hive-head in her lap. "Yeah, not letting people /know/ around here is harder than it looks." Wry. For a moment there is no answer, just the flick of a lighter and the quiet crackle of a deeeeep drag of his cigarette. Only once he has drawn in this delicious nourishment and then exhaled again in a rush of smoke does Hive move closer. He drops rather heavily down, not beside but in front of the offered space and takes them /both/, kind of curling /around/ the seated teenagers to sprawl. Newspapers. Head in Shelby's lap. The mind Parley touches is rather less like Hive today than it was on Thursday, still tethered to those mutants too brainchip-controlled or too traumatized to be either safe or functional alone; there is Hive in there underneath, for sure, but on top it is a jumble of other-people's-thoughts and other-people's-feelings. << Feeling, >> he says, in that same mental chorus, << like we need a smoke. Wanting is dangerous. But once you stop wanting you've kind of run out of having a point to living. So maybe living's just dangerous. >> Enveloped! Parley's head tips, considers this new proximity of Hivery, and then slowly shifts a leg to drape it lightly over one of Hive's. His own mind is in usual state, obscure but unedged, and where it rests against Hive's it's soft-pliant and streamlining, grooming on his multiple-me texture like a cat's tongue laying order to a fur grain. He takes another fail-drag from Shelby's cigarette, eyes closing to savor the communal feel of a shared activity and just kind of /ignoring/ the part where it all lodges in his nose and then shoots smoke through his nostrils when he coughs, handing it back to Shelby. Before he hurts somebody. He's leaning slowly, experimentally against her by increments, his eyes fixed steadily against the skyline. "I want." Damn the dangers, apparently. "No one gets out alive." Shelby is agreeing, and not really considering the timeliness of that statement. She is also holding herself very, very still--the way a normal person would if they'd encountered a deer (or unicorn!) in the woods. The teen does not want to frighten Hive away, nor startle Parley, so she is unusually restful while people settle on and against her. "What do you want?" It is a question for everyone or no one, something asked to fill the air while she takes back the cigarette. Only one more drag is taken before the butt is thrown to the side--well away from the crackly newspapers--and her hand lowers to gingerly petting the mussed boyband hair hiding all of those voices inside Hive's head. "And don't say a visit to Disneyworld, that's just dumb." What answers Shelby isn't so much speech as a jumbled tumble of thoughts all vying for primacy. << wantsleepwanttogohomewanttodiewantaburgerwanttofuckwantmydaughter >>; it takes a moment before, << this fucking cigarette, >> surfaces to the top under Parley's grooming. Hive moves it to his lips for amother long pull, his eyes closing under the careful petting and his posture generally shifting from slump to relax. He doesn't ask anything else but his questioning mental touch to each mind in turn is a quiet repetition of Shelby's question. What /do/ they want. SnowWhite!Shelby doesn't even have to sing! Parley grooms in sporadic portions of 'whatever-part-this-is' (analogous to those times a cat will groom indiscriminately right over another cat's eye, it's ear, it's cheek, it's FACE, it's eye again, some MORE...), and moments of concentrated, gentler attention to these few rare portions that are just Hive alone, when they arise. "Hive's cigarette," He says simply and with it floods a different sentiment. << Everything. >> It's accompanied by a very private chuckle that ripples only through his mind. His face stays gently even. 'The horny one in there's got the right idea.' See? Shelby hasn't changed /that/ much--she's good at amusing herself. "There's more in my pocket if you can reach it and want another," she says for Parley's benefit, only /somewhat/ distracted by trying to pick apart all of those people feltheardsensed in the one mind in her lap. "/I/ kinda want some broccoli beef and maybe an eggroll." Her grin is a decent cover for everything wanted and now out of reach--music-fans-romping-guitar-art-art-art. She is not dwelling but it's hard to shake the no-longer-haves, no matter how content one is with what's at hand. In this case, bringing order to shaggy hair with fingers as comb. "Can all of them hear you right now, Hive? Or are you just watching?" Hive offers his cigarette up to Parley, the easiest of all these wants to fulfill immediately. << Know a place, >> he says, << not far. Gooood Chinese. You're on. >> The minds that whisper beneath his are a tangle, one quite young, one ceaselessy fretting, one lost in a jumble of not-particularly-coherent muttering. The most familiar to Shelby is likely Flicker, swamped still beneath a fierce flood of pain but determinedly optimistic despite this. << Everything's harder. We'll start with today. >> There's a quiet pause, in which his mind brushes light against both those in company with him, touching against those wants and then retreating. << We share a lot. But not everything. Mostly watching. We -- I -- hear them. They only see through my eyes when I let them. >> "-oh," Parley cringes slightly against Shelby, touching Hive's hand as though it were fragile to coax it /back/ towards the rest of Hive's slumped-dead position. "--I didn't mean. Really. Sorry." The brush of minds by default would collapse into formless vacancy, but he cobbles it together politely to make at least a stepping stone of substance to touch back. It's comprised of very little, just a brief flash of (tired/shh/helpful/hesitant relaxation). "-- we could really--," carefully, carefully he reels back something weaker to say with more even gameness, "--I would enjoy going for a walk." Longer pause, "--if you would like to." In many languages that are not English, there is a plural form of 'you'. In Parley-ese, there is also one. It's just a sentiment, not a word. He doesn't seem to know that he's been nudging his cheek against Shelby's shoulder as she dodges thoughts of her own loss. Nudge. "Nah," Shelby says, dismissing her own want in a manner suspiciously timed to that flash of Flicker, "I can make a run later." A sidelong glance goes skittering over towards Parley to check on whether this is a disappointment, the rumple of her nose mildly apologetic--especially when he mentions a walk. "Seriously, Hive, just like...pretend you're resting for a minute, okay? You don't have to take care of everyone," she says, lifting her hand from Hive-hair to ruffle Parley-hair when she's nudged. "No one's gonna, like...spontaneously combust if you don't make everyone happy. We could do the walk thing, if you want. Or Chinese...hell, I can even pay. But I'm kinda digging the sun right now, y'know?" << Do you know the miracle of our fine city is that there are people who will deliver Chinese food right /to/ you. Fuck making people happy, /We/ want gorram Chinese now. >> Hive doesn't seem to notice pronoun slippage; but the fact that it is in fact /him/ and not just Someone In There who is actually hungry is demonstrated, timely, by a rumble of his stomach. << Or a walk. And a walk. It's nice today. >> He says that like it surprises him. << City's thawing. >> He doesn't poke further at these added wants of Shelby's, but there is a furrow of his brow. A brief opening of his eyes to glance up towards -- well, where her arm should be if it weren't hidden away. Parley watches Shelby's hand rise, face set in a mild curious-attentive, and when it ruffles him he closes his eyes and apparently decides this is acceptable, as he uses his nuzzle-cheeking to adjust her shoulder sleeve into something more comfortable and rests his cheekbone on it. "You /need/ to rest," he says simply, because a pot loves to call a kettle black. "I'll read the almanac to you," it's a vicious threat. If parents read the almanac to their children instead of kid's books, they'd conk out by the first paragraph. Parley even /has/ an almanac, though, right there at his far side, sitting atop some of the news papers. To Hive only, he trickles a quiet << she's worried(about you)(you know this). she's kind(it's hard) >>. "That's better," Shelby declares, "you were worrying me for a sec there, I was wondering where the asshole went." Thus relieved, she settles back against the wall and stubbornly ignores any and all subtle and less than subtle references to her arm or lack thereof. The subconscious can't be helped, the way her encounter with Masque is playing on a lower frequency, but she's talking over it. Happily oblivious. "You maybe can't tell, Parley, but Hive has this thing where he likes to pretend he's a jerk but really he /loves/ everyone. Especially me, but I'm seeing someone else right now so...if you want, my phone's in my pocket. You can order in, and we can walk /after/ so no one gets fat." Because they're all at risk of that, right? Parley's hair is smoothed once he's settled, then her hand returns to Hive's head, brushing his bangs down over his forehead. "Maybe the almanac can tell us if it'll still be nice later." << Everyone's worried about everyone, right now, >> Hive answers Parley, with a quiet acknowledgment that yes, he knew. << Been kind of a ride, lately. >> There's flashes of imagery that undercut this, that he'd rather not be having; bloodmonster sucking Ryan's blood, the back of Peace's head torn open by a bullet, Flicker's eyes looking down at Eli's acid-ruined body. Shelby's lack of arm. << getthatfucker, >> is a quieter mental /growl/ as Shelby's mind plays out the Masque encounter. << Everyone needs rest, >> is, at least, to both of them this time; << but need some fucking air more, shitcock, you've seen those apartments. Can't even sleep in my own fucking bed, lot of mooches we've dragged home. >> "We can walk after," is agreed. No rush. There's no recoiling from these's images; or at least nothing perceptible. Parley's mind has quietly dissolved against them with a single spear of (-adrenaline!/CONCENTRATION) before it's gone into fading ribbons that allow even the bloodiest thoughts so sink into him and vanish behind the curtain bloodlessly, replaced only by gentle, idle grooming once more. "--it is a little crowded," he admits. Shelby's fairytell story about Hive's secret personality is heard and, while he listens, he is /tidying/ Hive on the outside as well. Lightly plucking at his jacket collar to smooth it out. "I'm going to look for work," he announces, in the next moment. "Once I'm not needed at the school." Shelby is not privy to horrible mental images other than her own. That means she is relatively untroubled, having lived with the Masque butchery long enough to have made surface peace with it. Therefore, she is happy to join Parley in grooming the young man sprawled across laps. While he attends to the collar, Shelby tickles a fingertip under Hive's ear. "You love mooches," she informs him before casting a curious look over at her other roof-buddy. "What sorta stuff do you wanna do? You could /go/ to school if you wanted, y'know," she points out, clearly mistaking Parley for someone somewhat younger. Hive takes these tidyings with no discernible change in his absent-gruff demeanor. Even /tidied/ he still kind of looks generally just Shabby, patchy clothes and shaggy hair and now a veil of smoke as he drags at his cigarette again. His head twitches at Shelby's tickling; it draws an inadvertent smile out of him. << Work, what work. >> It comes with a chorus of /suggestion/, from the voices present behind Hive's mind: teacher/student/writer/mother(okay maybe Parley can't be that last)/techsupport/pickpocket. Hive frowns, adding, << don't be a pickpocket, >> like he doesn't quite /agree/ with the suggestion he/they just put across. << It'll clear out. It takes a while. People drift back to real life. Some stay. >> A flush of mental images, here, /too/, this time his own. Flicker. Ian. Dusk. Horus. Clarice. The twins. Ryan. Joshua. All their strange mishmash of tenuous family. << Make a new Real Life. >> "I could probably pickpocket," Parley of course then explores /this/ option first. "I'm very forgettable." Soothing-Hive seems so easy to turn into 'harassing helpless Hive' alliteration adventure, and he finds himself pulling off tidbits of newspaper and setting them on Hive's shoulders hair and cheek. The lowest burial ever. Here lies Hive: He Had an Open Mind. "--I hadn't," he speaks slower, carefully navigating down the words, "-- thought about school. I don't think the school has programs out of high school. I graduated..." his eyes drift along the constellations of litter he's placing, "...already. I'd been accepted into... Mmn." He's also putting debris on Shelby's leg. "Well. I'm sure I'd find something. I'm good at being useful." "You could be a busker," Shelby suggests in chorus with those voices. "There's like, totally an opening now." Her grin is quick and cutting, but thankfully the girl is soon distracted by the need to play the game. /Her/ version of it is Defend the Hive and it involves going behind after Parley to brush newsprint off of hair and cheek, fingers dipping down his collar to retrieve fallen bits. "If you graduated then you could get the school to hire you as a tutor. I haven't done /shit/ since middle school, they need all the tutors they can get," she volunteers, unconcerned with having taken it upon herself to spend Xavier's fortune. "Or go work for the Doc at his clinic. Is he hiring yet, Hive? Except for just you?" Hive /bats/ at pieces of newspaper, but kind of lazily. Swat. Flick. He stops when he realizes the cigarette in his hand means this is getting ash on his cloths, and contents himself with another drag while Shelby grooms him instead. << D'you want to go back to school? What were you gonna do? I mean, you could, >> he allows, with a flick of fingers towards Shelby, << be a bum like her. I bet she could give mooch lessons. >> Mental voice, though, means that his snark comes with a subtle undercurrent of affection, too. << Oh, yeah, he's hiring. Clinic won't be /open/ for a while, though, we're only breaking ground -- fuuuck, next week. Shit. Already. But they're gonna need a crapton of staff and who the fuck is gonna want to work at that bomb target? >> Well. This is, apparently, war. Parley is certainly putting a lot of sudden attention down at tearing off small bits of paper into a stockpile. "I could," rip-rip-rip-rip, neat, polite words, "work under a doctor. Easily enough." He takes up the handful of confetti and he MAKES IT SNOW, by holding it up and letting it all gently sprinkle down upon the dead soldier. Old shreds of new, very poetic. "I have the experience. I was going to study --" He flicks a last bit of paper off his thumb at /Shelby/, "...genetics. Actually. Do you /give/ lessons? How do you know when you are successful mooching?" Just for that, Shelby retrieves one of the removed scraps of paper and sets it down right on the bridge of Hive's nose. Ha. "That's what the Doc does. He's all about the DN--hey." She swats mid-air, misses the last bit of paper and ends up sending it skittering towards the rest of the confetti because wind currents. Then she goes back to grooming, except now Hive is on her bad side so she's collecting the confetti that missed to scatter it artfully over his hair. "You know it's working when people like you even if they paid for the last coupla dinners," she explains as she frowns, concentrating on the arrangement. "Haven't ever really given lessons before though. I'm trying to be a student again. It's harder." << Fuck you both I'm going to put my cigarette out on your hands. >> Hive doesn't, of course. He takes one last drag and then leans over to stump it out on the roof, out of reach of the newspaper piles. He flicks it off towards the barrier. Misses the edge, though, so the cigarette just kind of falls back sadly to the roof. He blows irritably up towards his nose, shaking his head as well to send the newspaper-scraps scattering. << Harder. But working out alright? >> Oh god. Don't be OCD. Except that Parley is looking intently after that cigarette, his lips compressed. Maybe he's thinking of running over and grabbing it. Saving a tree. His ears are fully functional so he is very likely listening. But silent, with fingers picking at the confetti bits on the ground. "I'll let you know when classes start. It's all been tests on how dumb I am so far. They're sticking me in with the freshmen," Shelby grumps--but not too hard, distracted as she is by the flurry of paper everywhere. A scoop of confetti is tossed Parley so he'll join her in being distracted. She's anti-productive, anti-responsibility; it's to be expected. "You guys wanna go get Chinese or order it in?" << Go, >> Hive says, << or we'll be ordering for a dozen fucking people and I'm broke. If anyone gives Parley shit, I'll eat their brains. Dude, if you want to salvage every damn scrap of litter you're gonna be up a long-ass time in this city. >> "That's not," Parley begins to say slowly, eyes lower, lips loosening to a relaxed default, "-what I was-." Except then there is /confetti/ assaulting him, and he looks at Shelby so /betrayed/, wide-eyed like this sudden and inevitable betrayal had never CROSSED HIS MIND. << oh-! playplayplay? >> He can't cope. He hits the deck, diving down to /faceplant/ (with absurd carefulness) into Hive's flank, crossing his good arm over his head to defend against paperbit shrapnel with a sort of papery-ragged little 'nheh' laugh. "...I'll go." Muffled-quiet. "-- if you pay, I'll help tutor you." Pause. "...if you let me read your textbooks first. I'm not -- It's been a while." Does he sound a little EAGER to chew through a few text books? Mmmaaybe. "I got money," Shelby says with a smug little head toss. She doesn't say /how/ she has money but hey, telepaths. They know all, including how she's been suckering students into paying to see her arm. Wait, what just happened. She blinks...and then she /laughs/ when Parley takes his dive. There's a rarity--her laughing, maybe not the dive. "Oh my god could you be any cuter?" she teenage-gushes before prodding at a boy shoulder here, a boy chest there. Which boy is random. "I got money for /Chinese/. Not tutoring. But you can read 'em if you want. It's all...I dunno. Boring shit. /Morals/. Ethics. Some bio, that's pretty cool. All the animal sex, hey Hive?" Hive drops a hand, absent-casual, to ruffle at the scruff of Parley's neck, mooshing his face in where he has dived with a snort. << Hey, you're the one who's into that, not me. Shelby's got a thing for sharks, >> he is informing them with great seriousness. << But I guess they've got a thing for her back. >> Wincing, he pushes himself slowly upwards. "C'mon," is actually said aloud, this time, scratchy-rough like he's not quite remembered /how/ to use his voice. Testing. "W-I'm fucking starving." Parley's furry scruff has a bit of notable looseness in how it's connected to the muscle layer beneath. It makes a decent ruffling handle, earning a brief 'mrgh' that, imbued by the universal empathic translation device (aka Parley), pretty much would translate to: Purr. It's a pretty sad little party of 'standing up' after this, between Hive's exhaustion, Parley's shoulder and Shelby's arm, probably with a lot of mutual grasping for and pulling upwards and /climbing/ of one another. "...I have not met your sharks yet." He informs Shelby once they're up, straightening his flannel and stooping to pick up his newspapers and book. "We can't all be tree-huggers," Shelby shoots back (with a mental echo of, "Oh Jiiim"). She's bad like that, but all too happy to scramble upwards with helping hands, her own offered where it is needed. "You hang around at all, you'll meet 'em. Bastian's the hot one," she says helpfully--making herself color up a little except she /never/ blushes, uh uh--with a grin. And then it's onwards for her, mission set: broccoli beef, hooo! As she goes, she proves that though Masque may have warped her arm, she still has her voice and by the time the stairwell door is opened, she's singing a rousing rendition of "Under the Sea". Emphasis on being better down where it's wetter.