ArchivedLogs:Mental Notes

Mental Notes
Dramatis Personae Hive, Tag
In Absentia	2013-01-10 '
Location <NYC> Common Ground Clinic - Clinton
A dingy waiting room with a line of rickety chairs, a small glass table with a set of permanently out-of-date magazines, a set of plastic holding racks with a number of informational pamphlets about STIs and partner abuse. This place is not, to be sure, the most cheerful on earth, but for many of its clientele it is the best they have. The Common Ground Clinic's staff provides free and low-cost medical care on a sliding scale to many of Manhattan's poorest residents, without checking for insurance, immigration status or many other things that bar entry for many of them to traditional medical care. There is counselling available, too, and once a week social workers to help people find resources for getting on their feet. The wait times are long, but the volunteer staff here is dedicated (if always overworked.) The clinic is busy but not overcrowded, blessed by its own subtle mid-week slump. Most of the clintele stare despondantly at the floor or thumb through magazines without aim or interest. Two middle-aged men discuss a mutual acquaintance at high volume despite sitting right next to each other. Tag, in a green-and-purple sweater and a space-dyed blue scarf, slumps back in his seat and considers the pamphlet in his hands. "Protect Yourself," it commands the reader above a cartoon of a smiling man giving the thumbs-up. His hair has grown long enough to hang down over his eyes, and contains every color of the rainbow in no particular order. Hive is drab as he enters the clinic, bringing with him a gust of frigid air from outside. Drab, at least, by comparison to the colorful young man pamphlet-reading, his own attire consisting of tatty dust-brown jacket and jeans that were once black but have long since faded to grey. By comparison to the general air of despondence coming from many of the clients, though, he may as well be rainbow-bright; his stride is an easy amble, a hint of smile lingering on his expression as he pockets his cellphone and heads for the front desk. The sign shifts into a frown as he signs in, looking over the many slots before him on the waiting list, but the frown has eased again by the time he takes a seat beside Tag. He glances over towards the pamphlet, first, and then the man holding it, eyebrows raising and grin quirking wider. "Shit," he offers, warm and draped with a distinctively Not-New-York but otherwise difficult to place accent, "that looks awesome. How long'd it take you?" His hand waves towards Tag's hair. Tag looks up at the man beside him and smiles--just half a beat too late to look altogether natural. "Oh! The hair? Thanks! Um, not...that long." About ten seconds, actually. He flails inwardly for a convenient lie, then brightens as one occurs to him. "My housemate helped me with it." That was true, from a certain point of view. She /had/ given him a coffee. "I'm Tag, by the way." The smile is genuine now. "Nice to meet you!" Something in this brightens Hive's smile further, though it's unclear as to which point. "Hive," he introduces himself, with a quick bob of his head. "That's me. Sorry, this is totally breeching etiquette, isn't it?" He gives a vague wave towards the waiting room in general. "I'm supposed to sit, not make eye contact, get in and out with minimal --" His head shakes, eyes skipping away from Tag towards another young man with head bowed and eyes determinedly focused on the floor. "You're hard not to notice, though. It's cool." "Some people do socialize here," Tag says, darting a glance at the two gentlemen conversing loudly on the other side of the waiting room. "A guy even tried to pick me up here, once." He folds the pamphlet over once and slips it into a pocket of his threadbare jeans, contemplating a good color for it. "I don't mind being noticed, as long as it's not being noticed by people who mean to mop the floor with me!" Tag chuckles. "But even if everyone else hated the colors, I wouldn't stop doing this. In fact," he says, gesturing at his hair, "I'm not sure I /could!/" "Awkward place to be picking people up," Hive answers, snorting, "though I guess you'd already know if they were --" His lips purse, expression thoughtful. "Awkward or convenient, I guess, depending on your point of view. Uhngh." He squints over towards Tag, mouth crooking up into a grin. "I'm not equipped to mop the floor with much of anyone. 'sides, people are more interesting in one piece. Do you have some sort of addiction to color?" He jumps from one topic to the next with little segue, looking back at Tag's hair. "Can't go too long without your next fix or you get shaky?" Tag mirrors Hive's grin. "I dunno, looks can be deceiving. My little sister can whup people thrice her size! But, yeah," he concedes, "people are /definitely/ more interesting in one piece." He focuses on a vibrant green, the color of suar maple leaves in spring, but refrains from pulling the pamphlet back out just yet. "I guess you could call it an addiction? More like a compulsion, maybe. I'm an artist," he adds, as though it explained everything. "What do you do? I mean, not employment-wise, necessarily, just...what's your /thing/? "Yeah?" Hive huffs out a laugh at that, slumping back in his chair lazily with hands folding against his belly. "Compulsion. You crazy? Most other artists I know are." The question fades his smile, slightly, eyes turning upwards as if he might be searching the dingy ceiling for answers. "Me? Still looking for my thing, maybe. I thought I had one, once, but life changes. I think at the moment my thing's just surviving. What do you art?" "Surviving's a /thing/. In fact, it's currently my day job, though I'm not that great at it. Probably," Tag speculates, "because I'm crazy. Not in a Vincent Van Gogh sort of way, though." He figures he has waited long enough and fishes the pamphlet-- now solid green and devoid of text or images--from his pocket. "I paint on stuff--wood, canvas, walls." Mostly walls. "I like to make things colorful." Hive's eyebrows lift at the changed pamphlet, though past this his reaction seems oddly unsurprised. He reaches for it uninvited, to inspect the green paper further. "Got a friend like you," he murmurs half to himself as he looks it over. "Colorful. Crazy. Artist. Freak." The almost amused weight he gives to /freak/ makes this more warm than derogatory. "Surviving seems like it can be a full-time job for a lot of us, sometimes." Tag swallows, as if to stuff the incipient panic back into the pit of his stomach whence it came. "Freak," he echoes softly. "Yeah, pretty much." His father's voice, angry and terrified, tells him to get out. "You like origami?" he asks, indicating the green paper in what he hoped was a casual way. He reminds himself there is no way Hive would think it was the same piece of paper. Unless he was Sherlock Holmes reborn. Or born at all, since Holmes is fictional... Hive turns the paper over in his hands, fingers brushing at the edge of a corner to test its weight. "I like art," he answers eventually, handing the green page back to Tag. "Whatever its medium. Hey, s'not a bad thing. This city's full of freaks. You're in good company." His brow furrows, then, adding with a bit more wryness, "Or, okay, you're in a /lot/ of company, at least." "Heh, I guess so," Tag says, relieved. "And everyone's probably a freak to /somebody/ out there, anyway." He unfolds the paper and creases it diagonally, then creases the leftover and tears it off, leaving a more-or-less perfect square. "I don't have a problem with being a freak at all, but it still hurts when people treat me like one." He doubts Hive would, though. Smiling again, Tag folds the green square into a smaller square. "Then, knowing it will hurt, I keep on flying my freak flag. I must like pain." He creases the folds with his thumbnail on the glass table, glancing sidelong at Hive through a curtain of orange bangs. "So, are you a freak, too?" "Oh, that's for sure. No matter who you are there's someone else you think is weirder." Hive shifts forward to rest an elbow on his knee, propping chin on knuckles and watching Tag fold the paper. "I feel you there. I've had pain enough but somehow that just makes me /more/ outspoken." There's not much in to read in his expression past curiosity, a small amiable smile on his lips, but the smile sharpens a little when he looks from the paper to Tag's face. "Oh, I'm the kind of freak that even most freaks hate." Tag pauses for a moment and takes his eyes off of the modified kite base under his fingertips. "Really?" He goes back to folding. "Me, too. Well, 'hate' is a strong word for it, but I have /several/ freak flags, and it seems like everyone is squicked out by at least one of them. This part is really fidgety..." He trails off as he coaxes a sharp, flat fold into a three-dimensional curve. The paper was starting to look like some bizarre alien orchid. "But I don't make a habit of hating people, myself. I get mad, but hate?" He shakes his head. "Who has time for that, right?" Too many people. "Too many people," Hive says, almost in tandem echo with Tag's unspoken thought. He says it a little /grimly/, though, fingers tightening into a harder fist where his chin rests on them. "Time to hate and time to act on it and time to /make/ surviving be a full time job." There's a slight edge to his tone, hard and little angry but it fades as he watches the folding curiously. "How long'd it take you to learn?" "You read my mind," Tag says, sighing. "I guess everyone's got to have a hobby. I just wish people spent more time on art or something and less time making other people's lives difficult." He repeats the fold on each of the 'petals', pleased that it felt less awkward with repetition. "My grandmother in China taught me how to fold cranes when I was tiny, and most origami is some kind of variation on that. I don't quite recall, but it probably took a few tries before I could do it by heart. Once I got it, though, I kept on going. They say if you fold a thousand paper cranes, you can make a wish and it would come true." If only! But he steered clear of that line of thought. "Take some patience. For the right wish it'd be worth it." Hive is still watching the paper, rather than watching Tag. For the most part, at least, though for a moment his eyes slant sideways. "What would yours be?" "Oh, I made a thousand of them, all right!" Tag replies, chuckling. "I was so good at it by the end I could fold a crane with blindfolded, with one hand tied behind my back. /That/ trick's earned me a few drinks down through the years." It was a lot safer than color tricks, too. "My wish? I wanted to be a real boy!" He gives a nervous laugh and folds the ends of the long, slender 'petals' at right angles. It looks a lot less like a flower now. "Still do, I guess," he mutters. "What about yours?" "And it didn't come true?" Hive's eyes do turn back to Tag, now, flicking in a long slow sweep over the other man. "I mean, what makes a real boy? How would you know when you arrived?" There's a subtle twitch at the corner of his mouth, and he rolls a shoulder in a slow shrug. "Guess I wanted to be a real boy, too. Once upon a time. I got over it. Uh. Is that a freaking X-Wing?" He is peering at the paper closer, now, though in between his eyes still dart to the man folding it. "What do you get if you fold a thousand of /those/?" Tag frowns a bit, hunching his shoulders instinctively under the other man's gaze. "I'm not really sure /anyone/ knows what makes you a real boy, or man. Just about everyone knows one when they see one, though!" He holds up the paper starfighter triumphantly. "It sure is! One thousand X-Wings would be awesome, but you only really need one." He grins. "This is Red 5, I'm going in! Hm, I guess I should have made it red..." "Then how do you know it didn't come true? I mean, if everyone knows one when they see one --" Hive shrugs a shoulder. "/I'm/ seeing one now." He reaches for the starfighter, to look it over more closely, an impressed expression on his face. "Shit. This is probably not the most /traditional/ but damn if that's not awesome." The last comment makes him look up -- not at Tag or the starfighter but around the room for a moment. And then back, eyes fixing on Tag's as he hands the paper ship back. "Can you?" His tone is blunt. "Make it red?" "Thanks. My ex had some choice words about my masculinity the last time we 'talked'," Tag says, "but that probably isn't all that uncommon when people are angry. I still feel wrong--always have, and probably always will." Taking the X-Wing back, he meets the other man's eyes. He visualizes the brightest, purest scarlet, the kind most people only see while tripping. The green X-Wing transforms, almost instantly, to a brilliant red. "This is Red 5, standing by," he quotes, smiling sheepishly. "Probaby good they're your ex, then," Hive answers with a short huff of breath that might be a snort or might be a laugh. "I don't think I really understand masculinity anyway. Kinda always felt like it is whatever you want it to be." He doesn't watch the X-Wing, he watches Tag, eyes fixed steadily as the X-wing transforms. His mouth curls just as instantly into a wide grin. "Thought so," he murmurs, under his breath. And then nods towards Tag's rainbow hair. "Must be convenient. For the hair. Maaaybe not for living." Tag lets out the breath he was holding. "Much like with the color, I'm not about to start conforming to someone else's idea of masculinity--probably wouldn't even if I could." He makes a few small adjustments to the S-foils, refusing to scan the room for any judgmental looks. "It's convenient for a /lot/ of things, but I never know when I might just do it without realizing." He tilts his head and sweeps a locks of ultramarine hair out of his eyes. "Anything like that ever happen to you?" Hive's grin fades, his breath exhaled soft and slow. "More than a few times," he admits, though he does so after a long pause. "But when it happens to me it ends -- ugly." He waves towards the red origami ship. "What I do isn't nearly so attractive." "I'm sorry to hear that," Tag mumbles. "Not everything is as ugly as we think it is, because how we see things is all twisted up by our own experiences. But you seem like a good person, and I don't think that changes, even things...get ugly. Here." He holds out the X-Wing. "I want you to have this, if you want it." "That's true enough," Hive agrees, "though some things are just -- ugly. I don't add color to the world. Just," he says, with a thin grim slant of smile, "pain. I try not to, though. Usually." His eyebrows lift in surprise, then, and he takes the X-Wing this time a little more carefully than his earlier inspection. "Hey, thanks." His grin returns. "Will it bring me good luck?" Tag purses his lips in thought, but decides against mentioning the scene where Leia kissed Luke 'for luck'. No X-Wings there, anyway. "Well, red is an auspicious color in China," he says, shrugging. "Besides, you never know when you might need to destroy a tiny origami Death Star..." Hive's grin stretches wider even before Tag starts speaking. "This'd be less incestuous, at any rate," he mutters half under his breath. He zooms the ship through the air, bringing it for a landing on his knee. "Sweet. The Empire could threaten at any moment. I'll be sure to keep this in good repair. Just in case." "That's just what I was..." Tag blinks rapidly. Can Hive hear what he's thinking? Or maybe just a big Star Wars fan. Or Sherlock Holmes. Should he worry? If nothing bad has happened yet, then probably not. Right? "Yes," Hive answers the unspoken thoughts with the same directness he asked Tag about changing the color of the X-Wing. "I know it was. And I can." He leans back in his chair, still smiling though it's a little tenser. "Like I said. M'one of the freaks the other freaks hate. Lighting people on fire's one kind of danger, but there's not much of anyone that likes someone in their head. Worst invasion of privacy there is." He doesn't really sound /apologetic/, but he doesn't sound particularly thrilled either. He is watching Tag closely, with these words. "I can think of worse things," Tag replies, very quietly. "But I won't." He thought really hard about polar bears--majestic, deadly, goofy-looking polar bears. "I don't feel /invaded/. I almost kind of wish everyone could do it. Then there wouldn't be any point in lying. I'm so damned bad at it." He snickers, feeling oddly liberated by his inability to conceal the fact that he found having his thoughts read...oddly liberating. Is that tautological, or just recursive? Hive's teeth flash, for a moment, his knuckles scrubbing at the side of his cheek. "Lots of people go with penguins," he says with a hint of amusement. "Is there something particularly shielding about the Arctic?" It's his turn to let out a breath, now -- maybe metaphorically, he hasn't really been /holding/ it, but he does relax in a gradual easing of tension at Tag's reaction. "Oh, man, if everyone could do it," he says, wry, "everyone would have a fucking /hell/ of a perma-headache." Tag shrugs. "Someone once told me it was impossible to try to /not/ think about polar bears. I tried for a little while." Then we made out while watching anime. He blushes, just a bit. "Penguins are pretty awesome too! I'll keep it in mind. It doesn't /really/ work, though, does it?" he asks, leaning in a bit closer. Hive is shifting, too, leaning in slightly with both his elbows propped against his knees. One shoulder lifts and falls, his answering grunt noncommittal. "Depends," he says, after a moment. "With some people it doesn't work. It doesn't work if I'm /trying/. It's distracting enough casually that it steers me away from most shit if I'm not actually trying to pry." His mouth hitches up in a crooked smile. "There's a lot of people who might pry and you'd never even notice. But if I were /trying/ to poke around in your head, you'd know it." "If you believe the Friends of Humanity propaganda," Tag says conspiratorially, "mutants already control /and/ read our thoughts anyway. Or something like that. Not sure why it has to be both..." Because they secretly find it kind of hot. "I appreciate your honesty, though. You could have frakked with my head just by /denying/ it." Hive shrugs a shoulder again, slower this time with a brief frown. "Coulda, I guess. It's enough of a mindfuck that I can do it. You don't get to lie to me, s'not quite fair if I lie to you." The frown disappears, though the thin smile that replaces it doesn't seem all that pleased either. "Some mutants can. If you're worried about mind control, I'm the Friends' worst nightmare. But I've seen more humans try to control us than us try to control them. -- Possibly," he acknowledges, "only because they outnumber us so badly." "I think it's just a part of how people interact," Tag suggests. "It seems like everyone is trying to read or control other people in /some/ way or another. Some are direct, others not so much; some are more concerned about consent, others less so." Travel the world and the seven sea, everybody's...penguins. "So I don't know if there's anything /especially/ dispicable about them doing it to us, or vice versa." "Everyone tries to some degree," Hive allows, but there's a touch of bitterness in his continuation, "but some are more extreme than others." His fingers flick towards his own head. "Mind control or locking people in cages, neither way's really, uh. Tolerable. I feel pretty comfortable labeling some of the shit I've seen despicable." "Despicable, certainly," Tag agrees. "I just never thought of it as a special /brand/ of despicable. Maybe it's because I really have no way of conceptualizing it?" He shrugs, tugging idly at the cuff of his sweater, and its green yarns start bleeding into a watery teal. "I have always been free. Whenever someone told me I couldn't do what I /really/ wanted to do..." Dress like that, draw on that wall, kiss a boy, /be/ a boy. "...I've run away. I guess you can't do that if someone literally controls your thoughts, but that's so hard to image that it seems unreal. Anyway, /you/ would never do that." Right? "Easier to run away when there aren't locks holding you back." Hive is lifting a hand, pushing back his scruffy mop of hair from the side of his head; by his ear there is the knotted webbing of scar tissue, curling up against his skull and disappearing where his hair mostly hides it. "I wasn't being metaphorical about the cages." He doesn't sound bitter, anymore. Just bland, a little tired as he looks towards the door while a nurse calls another patient in. Not him. His eyes slant back to Tag. "Do you do what you want to do, now?" The last question garners a small smile, tired as well. "I guess it's hard to conceptualize," he agrees, looking down to study his nails, "but I could make it /real/ easy to imagine, if you wanted a glimpse. Like I said. It's not a power that makes anyone's life /brighter/." "It doesn't sound like a place I want to go," Tag says, shrinking back a little. It doesn't sound like a place /Hive/ wants to go, either. Yet he is curious now--curious and terrified. "I do what I want to, pretty much--never really been in a cage, metaphorical or otherwise." Nave, and a lot more fortunate than he thought just a few short hours ago. "And you're not in one, either. Not anymore." "Not a place I'd want anyone to go." Hive scruffs fingers through his hair, brushing it back down into place. "-- Not the cages /or/ -- what I do to people." For a moment he smiles, quick and almost amused. "Oh, almost everyone's got a cage of some sort. Smash down one and I'm sure you'll find another waiting. It would be a feat to break them all. Though I try every day even if it's pointless. Doing what you want's a nice place to be, though. What /do/ you want to do?" Tag's sweater has grown a few shades brighter, starting from the collar, hem, and cuffs. It would not be noticeable to anyone who hadn't been watching him steady. Probably. "I believe that suffering perpetuates itself in part because we cling to it. Instinctively, like the way infants grab things. What do I want to do?" He chuckles. "Aside from having enough to eat and keeping a roof over my head? I want to make art. I want to put more color in the world. Not /just/ literally, but it's a start. I guess not wanting a 'real' job is why I can't seem to find one." Hive laughs, quiet and warm at Tag's answer. "You want to put more color in the world," he echoes, his smile sharp and amused. "I have a friend you should meet. Think you'd get on great. I've definitely heard worse life goals than that. /I/ can't find a real job cuz I refuse to work for anyone who -- wouldn't want to work with me. When they know." His finger taps against his temple. "So is the whole world secretly full of masochists? I'm pretty happy when I'm not suffering -- then again," he adds wryly, "I guess I did just admit I routinely fuck over my own chances of steady employment." "Well, I think it's kinduva /subconscious/ thing, but you could call it masochism, too," Tag says philosophically. "I believe a number of things that don't make a whole lot of sense to most people, though. I still think people are basically good. Damaged and terrible sometimes, but still /basically/ good." A nurse pokes his head into the waiting room and calls, "Mister...um, Tag?" Tag sits up straight. "Coming!" Then, to Hive. "He must be new. If you want to talk again sometime, I'm at Montague's in SoHo most days!" "Try peeking into their heads a while," Hive answers with a crooked grin, "see how good you think 'em then." He glances at Tag when the other man is called, and his smile brightens for the offer. "Montague's. Got it. Good luck," he says, looking from Tag to the nurse. He leans forward to claim a several-months-outdated Time magazine,  opening it with one hand while his other absently flies his small red X-Wing through the air. And settles in to wait his own turn.