ArchivedLogs:Painting the Town Rainbow

Painting the Town Rainbow
Dramatis Personae Jackson, Tag
In Absentia	2012-12-17 Tag and Jax just want to make the world more colourful.
Location <NYC> Lower East Side
Historically characterized by crime and immigrant families crammed into cramped tenement buildings, the Lower East Side is often identified with its working-class roots. Today, it plays host to many of New York's mutant poor, although even here they are still often forced into hiding. This is, perhaps, not the most typical place to choose a meeting -- or time, either, for that matter. It's well into the witching hours of night, though as far as haunting goes Jackson makes a rather unthreatening spectre. His clothes are not built for lurking, black jeans striped with thin shimmery silver pinstripes, paired with chunky pink and grey sneakers, a slim-fitted purple corduroy jacket and brightly rainbow coloured armwarmers. His cap is purple and green, pulled down over hair of a similar shade. Despite the middle-of-the-night hour, he wears sunglasses still, large and mirrored. The /place/ he waits is made for lurking, even if he is not; he sits perched on a dumpster in an alley between a falafel shop and a tall office building, legs dangling down over its side. The fact that he is humming quietly to himself, something low and perky and, admittedly, mildly off-key, is also rather unfitting for Lurking. Tag climbs out the window and onto the fire escape of the apartment he shares with Melinda, crouching to survey his surroundings before scampering down as quietly as he can manage. He drops down into the alley, startling a rat from its nightly foraging. Peeking out into the street and seeing only a few vagrants about--no one he recognized yet--he covers the three-block run to the appointed place. He arrives breathing hard, his breath misting in the cool night air. The denim jacket he wore, deep indigo doted with many-colored stars, was almost too warm after the run, and a rainbow knit beany covered his rainbow hair. He spots Jackson sitting on the dumpster and approaches him. "Hey!" he whispers. "Hope you didn't wait long." Jackson's humming quiets at the sound of approaching footsteps, and for a moment he does grow marginally lurkier -- not so much in any change in his bright-coloured appearance, more that there is a brief moment when the shadows around him grow subtly darker. As Tag comes into view, this shifts back to its previous state of puddled-darkness in between the dim light of streetlamps outside, and Jackson's pierced lips curl into a quick-bright flash of smile. Bracing his palms against the dumpster lid, he pushes himself off to slide down to the ground. "Hi!" It would be a cheerful sort of carol if it were not whispered; as it is his energy is conveyed more in the brightness of his expression, the slight bounce up onto his toes with the greeting. "Nah, ain't been long since I got off work anyhow." He reaches back up onto the dumpster to claim his messenger bag, still sitting up there, and hooks it over one shoulder. "M'glad you came. It's not really the most, uh, traditional of places for a first --" He trails off, finishing the sentence with a vague flutter of glittery-nailed fingers rather than actual words. "I have never been too big on tradition," Tag replies, grinning. "It /is/ an excellent place to make art, though!" The lower portions of the alley walls bore many tags and tattered remnants of fliers for dance parties long past, but nothing big and colorful. "I thought we could improve on it, you know?" Tag turned back to Jackson, taking in his outfit. "You look fantastic! I wish I had your fashion sense, but apparently that doesn't automatically come with color-manipulating powers." He tugs at the not-actually-tie-dyed t-shirt beneath his jacket, and the colors on it shifted like a slow-moving, rainbow-hued hurricane. "Maybe you can teach me sometime?" "Really? But you look so old-fashioned, I'd never've been able to tell." Jackson's sunglassy gaze is a little hard to read, but his smile is easy enough to see as he watches the colours shift on Tag's shirt. "I mean, not that I'd be opposed to style lessons but, I don't know, I'm kinda loving your jacket. Maybe it'd be more of a style /exchange/." His hand drops to rest on the flap of his bag, and he surveys the wall of the alley thoughtfully. "Most of the world's an excellent place to make art," he decides, cheerfully, "but some places could definitely use the colour a bit more. -- Do you really change it?" This question is abrupt and curious, Jackson looking back to Tag's shirt once again. "I mean, like, dye it? Paint it?" "I was in kind of a starry mood after painting my room," Tag admits. "I don't usually go in for muted and dark, but pretty much any color is fine by me." He nods at the wall. "Even dingy gray, in the right place. Not here, though, there is /way/ too much dingy gray in the city." He cocks his head slightly and reaches out his hand, laying it on a relatively clear spot on the wall. Colors radiated out from his palm in a spectrum from red to violet. "I am not sure, actually," he says, frowning a bit. "I don't think it's actually extra matter, because metal still conducts electricity after I've tagged it. As far as I can tell, I just /change/ the surface of stuff to a different color, but it's still the same stuff otherwise." He glances back at Jackson and flashes a crooked smile. "What about you? Any theories?" "Is it tiring? Man, I'd love to be able to paint my room like that, I don't think it'd stay the same colour more than a day at a time, though. It'd change as often as my hair." Jackson watches, for a moment, then steps in towards the wall, resting his hand on the wall alongside Tag's as the colours spread. "S'funny, I can /feel/ it change," he murmurs, quiet, but then drops his hand. "Can my theory be that it's awesome?" he asks, his smile quick and bright in return. "The stuff I do, I don't -- I don't really change anything. It just kinda looks like I do. And it doesn't last. Not past however long I'm actually thinking 'bout it." "Tiring?" Tag shakes his head. "Nah. Well, not stuff like this, anyway. It gets tiring if I cover a large surface quickly--kind of like physically painting a whole room, you know? Also, it gets harder the farther away I am." He removes his hand, leaving a hand-shaped gray space in the middle of the seven-colored circle. "So you have to consciously keep the color in place? But you can also feel it when I tag, so it must be kind of similar, right?" Tag chuckles. "This is where I wish I had gotten some more schooling. Not that this is the kind of thing you just go to grad school and write a dissertation on, anyway. 'Awesome' is probably a better theory, anyway." He winks at Jackson. "So can you do other stuff? Not just colors, I mean, can you change sounds, or texture, or whatever--even if it is only while you're thinking about it?" "You can do it to stuff you aren't touching? From how far?" Almost experimentally, Jackson rests his hand in the grey space left behind. When he pulls his hand away, it seems to leech colour along with it, the multihued circle apparently stretching away from the wall until it is tugged clean off, the wall grey again and a somewhat translucent sphere of seven colours held in Jax's palm. "I can feel it because I can feel light. Or how things reflect light. Every colour feels different to me." The sphere expands, slowly, swelling out like a bubble until it encases Jax's hand rather than rests on it. "No. I mean, yes. I can do things. But not -- um." He bites down uncertainly on his lip, teeth clicking quietly against his lip rings. "Nothing /else/. Only light. Or the energy I get from light, anyway. Mostly I just like to make things pretty." "If I focus, I can tag anything I can see," Tag replies, "but it gets pretty messy pretty fast. Can't do better than big blobs of color after about twenty feet." He stares, entranced, as Jackson pulls the colors from the wall and into the air. "That /is/ completely awesome!" he breathes, reaching out unconsciously to touch the rainbow sphere. "I can't change these colors at all. Light must be out of my league, huh?" His fingers pass right through the apparent surface of the bubble, grazing Jack's hand. "Don't sell yourself short. You are amazing!" Jackson's cheeks flush darker in the dim alley light, and his fingers curl slightly, brushing light against Tag's. The bubble expands further, around their arms and then swelling to encompass them both, colours shifting in a soft glow around them. "Light don't have a surface, I guess. Or -- well." For a moment he purses his lips, thoughtful, and then the sphere around them dissolves, breaking down into a myriad of tiny colourful motes that dance away down the alley and then disappear. Beside them, the wall has returned to the way Tag left it, circle spread colourful with the grey handprint in the center. Jax turns his hand up, another small sphere appearing over it after a moment; this one is clearer, though it shimmers faintly prismatic. Its surface is slightly warm, and hard to the touch. "Can you do this?" Tag rests his palm on the surface of the sphere and focused. The shimmering on its surface seems to intensify, and then settles into a vibrant shade of purple. He released the breath he had been holding and chuckled, brown eyes sparkling with childlike wonder. "Whoa. I was going for the shade of your jacket, but it looks like I missed by a bit. It's...kind of...slippery? Difficult to tag, anyway, like melting ice, or skin." Jackson's fingers curl up around the small sphere, watching with a small smile as its colours change. A faint shiver ripples up through him, and he breathes out a quiet laugh once the field has been purpled. "That's weird," he says, though the quiet curiosity in his tone does not imply this is a /bad/ thing. "I mean, I feel everything that's around here, but. I don't know. Only peripherally? Changing something I'm actually /making/, though, it's like --" His head shakes, and when he shifts his hand to trace a finger absently across the surface of the purple sphere, the ball stays in place, hanging in midair as solidly as though it were rooted there. "Is skin harder? How long does it last? I mean, I tag people," he has a quick flash of grin for this, tugging up one sleeve slightly to show the thorny edges of a tattoo on his wrist. "but I do it with needles. Could I be purple?" Tag nods. "It is harder, and it only lasts a few days--less, with vigorous scrubbing. I'm kind of thankful, though, because sometimes I change the colors around me unconsciously when I'm...distracted." He pauses, blushing, and tilts his head. "Like the other day, when I met you at Montagues. But since skin takes concentration, I usually don't do it by accident. Usually." He studies Jackson's tattoo. "I don't have any tattoos, because I used to be terrified of needles. Not anymore, though, and I kind of want to get inked. Maybe just my actual tag." He flicks a glance at the wall, and the letters 'T-a-g' appear in rainbow cursive inside the gray palmprint. "Could I get you to do it?" The tattoo on Jackson's wrist is a circled A in a rather trademark anarchist symbol, though in his case the A is circled in a ring of thorns. It vanishes again as he tugs his sleeve back down into place. "Distracted?" Jax turns his head, watching the wall as the letters appear. "I used to glow. I -- still do. Sometimes. Not usually. It gets, uh, noticeable in public." He is still looking at the letters, for a long while, and then the letters appear again, in midair between them. He reaches for Tag's hand, though doesn't take it, eyebrows lifting in silent quest for permission first. "Yeah. Yeah, I could do that. Where would you want it?" His lips quirk up, smile warm. "-- Could you do me?" "Yeah, distracted," Tag replies absently, watching Jackson recreate his tag in thin air. "I guess if you can glow, you can make shadows, too." Taking the offered hand gently, Tag met Jackson's eyes again. "Where's a good place for a first tatoo--maybe the forearm? That's where I usually /pretend/ to have it tattooed. As for you..." His smile turned just a little mischievous. "I could, but being purple from head to toe would probably make you kind of noticeable in public. Though if you just want to see what it looks like, I can always undo it afterwards." Jackson's hand is rather warm to the touch -- almost feverish, as compared to most people's. He turns Tag's arm upwards, gently pushing up the sleeve of the denim jacket to recreate the tag on skin this time, letters printing themselves across Tag's forearm. "The forearm's pretty easy. Not so brutal as some places. Wrist hurts like nobody's business. The fleshier the better, really, in pain terms, but I guess /good/ place just depends on -- who you want to be seein' it." One side of his mouth pulls upwards, crooked and amused. "Oh, yeah, it'd be noticeable for sure. My kids are blue," he remarks, absent as he shifts the size of the letters, watching how they look first smaller and then bigger as they stretch across Tag's arm. "Think the world treats you a whole lot different when you can't hide. You could draw something. On me. If," he adds, a little sheepish, "you can find free skin. I'm near out of canvas." "I probably wouldn't want to have to choose between stripping and outting myself everytime someone asks what my tag looks like," Tag replies, snickering, "so somewhere accessible like the forearm is good. If I want something reserved for a more limited audience, there's still plenty of real estate left." He watches Jackson play with the size of the tag writte nin light on his forearm. "I'll never have kids, but I've been blue before. I always had a choice in that, though. There have been other things I couldn't change so easily, but they're easier to hide than skin color. I'm lucky. As for canvas..." He looks up at the wall, and tendrils of color reach out from the rainbow sphere surrounding his tag, weaving in and around the other graffiti around it. "...I am not too bad at working around prior art." "I never planned to have any," Jackson admits, "but they just kinda stumbled in. Unsurprisingly, the foster system's not too great for kids who're blue and gilled. They sorta wound up with me and never left." He is still holding Tag's hand, still looking at Tag's arm, the cursive words looking, still, the same as they originally did, though around them on Tag's skin colour spreads out in constantly shifting bright patterns. Leaves. Vines. Feathers. Perhaps Jax is doodling. "I kinda forget that stripping isn't all that socially acceptable most times," he admits, with a crinkle of his nose and a crooked grin. "All day at work folks take off their clothes for me so I can needle 'em. Kinda rote an' professional. Forearm's great for polite company, though." The slight shift of his head marks the shift of his gaze, too, first watching the colours weave their way over the wall and then looking to Tag's face. "I'm never a fan of having to hide. Any parts'a who you are. S'often the safest thing, hardly ever the most comfortable though. -- That," here he is speaking about the wall, judging by his slight tilt of head towards it, "is so neat. Kinda don't even want to suggest nothin' for you to do on me. Just let you paint whatever you fancy." Tag gives a sad, wan smile. "I used to live with some punks, real radical people. They said they accepted everyone just as they are, and did not want me to hide anything. Once they knew about me, though, they still treated me differently. Not cruelly, but you could tell they were ill at ease. Like I violated their sense of order in the world." He gives a helpless shrug, and the vines creating themselves across the wall beside them started growing thrones. "It's not really even their fault. People can't think or relate to each other without assumptions, and most assumptions aren't going to include people like you and me, or your kids." He pauses, embellishing the roots extending down out of the rainbow node. "Jax, do you have a...lover?" he blurts, "Or lovers?" Jackson's nose wrinkles, his brow creasing above the dark glasses he wears. "S'always a little disappointing. Folks you'd think would understand what it's like to be kinda on the fringes just end up pushing each other further out there themselves." Almost unconsciously, his hand squeezes Tag's, brief and gentle. The vines spreading against the wall begin to blossom, not on the wall but growing out of it, flowers seeming to creep forth from the stone to unfurl faintly glowing petals into the night air. At least, until Tag's abrupt question, which puts a blush -- not just /in/ Jackson's cheeks but in the air around them, a faint pink glow tinting his immediate vicinity for a moment, then vanishing. "OH, I --" His head ducks, toe digging against the cracked asphalt. His hand drops, and for a moment it seems that he has forgotten he still holds Tag's hand in his; he looks down at their joined hands for a long blank moment before disentangling his fingers to scuff them up beneath his hat and through his fringe of colourful hair. "No, I -- um. Not right -- no. Do, um --" His tone is a little shyly awkward, thick Southern drawl somewhat stilted. "D'you?" Jackson's reaction startles Tag, though not nearly as much as Tag's question had startled Jackson. "I'm sorry if that's a sensitive topic, Jax," he says gently. "I just didn't feel quite right flirting so hard at someone without knowing if I'm trampling over any existing relationships." Tag blushes, too, though his skin does not show it easily. "I'm not involved with anyone right now--not since I accidentally turned my last boyfriend red. Not like this," he gestures at his flushed face, "more like /bright/, fire-engine red." Sighing, he looks at the wall and makes a few vivid red roses bloom on the vines. "I didn't mean to, and I didn't even have time to tell him it wasn't permanent. He just flipped out." "I didn't know that you were --" Jackson starts to murmur, but trails off with a slow look back towards the vines. They start to creep out of the wall, too, trailing thick and three-dimensional to coat the wall like ivy. "I'm sorry, it's just been a -- things with my last partner were -- I never really expect anyone to -- I'm not good at --" Finishing sentences, apparently, because he ends with just a shrug but then a slight crooked smile. "...red? Could be a good colour for some folks. M'sorry," he adds, more seriously, "that he freaked out over it. Comin' out ain't never easy and it sure don't get /more/so if folks freak before you can explain." "You don't have to talk about it if it's upsetting," Tag reassures him. "We all have things that are easier and things that are harder to communicate. You know how you are about nudity, because you see it so much? I'm kind of that way about flirting...and so on. I spent a lot of time around very 'liberated' people, and though I normally don't do much of it myself, it seems very commonplace to me." He started adding birds, insects, and small mammals to the increasingly plant-dominated mural. "As for poor Jason...trust me, he did /not/ look good in red. Not at all! I tried to take it off of him when I went back to pack, but he just hauled off and punched me, so it didn't work so well." Tag touches his cheek, where the bruise has since faded. A drop of water paints itself onto one of the leaves, poised to fall. "See, some people wouldn't want to say that, but it's easy somehow. But if I tried to talk about my parents, I would be all nouns. Not very nice ones, either." That drop of water does fall, swelling and then dripping to splash silently down onto the ground. Jackson winces as it falls, brows creasing as Tag touches his cheek. "/Punched/ you, oh, gosh. That's not -- yikes. I hope you ain't gonna have to see him again no time soon." His head tips down, gaze dropping to the dirty pavement around them. It starts to grow and bloom, as well, rippling with a growing carpet of grass, wildflowers dotted among it. "Flirting ain't upsetting," he assures Tag with an easier smile. "M'last relationships may've been, a little. I think I just get so busy these days I forget flirting's still a thing people do." Dragonflies hover, over his carpet of greenery, bright jewel-tones and zigzagging through the flowers, around Tag's legs, up around the mural on the wall. Absently, Jax's hand curls itself into a loose fist, thumb brushing slowly against the missing stub of scars where his pinky should be. "Guess everyone's got their -- things. Difficult issues. Difficult relationships. Love or family or otherwise." "He wouldn't have /really/ hurt me," Tag insists, sounding less certain than he had intended. "But no, I don't mean to ever see him again if I can avoid it." Looking around at the art spilling off of the wall and into the alleyway, a smile returned to his face unbidden. Gradually, he fills in the gray backdrop of the mural with the cerulean blue of a perfect summer sky. "I hear you about being busy. I'm been hunting for jobs, which isn't easy for people like me in the best of times." Tag lifts up one foot to see if there is grass beneath it. "I'm glad you could find time to join me tonight, though," he adds softly. Jackson frowns, biting down on his lip and tipping his gaze back towards Tag at the uncertainty in the other man's voice. "Mmm -- good. I mean. That you're not going to see him again. He don't sound like the healthiest person to be around." He says this seriously, but then leaves it there, turning his attention back to the growing greenery around them. Beneath Tag's foot there /is/ grass, though intangible as it is it vanishes rather than get trampled down when Tag's foot is set back down. "What kinda jobs are you lookin' for?" Jax wants to know, tone sympathetic and nose crinkling. "It can be a /slog/ for sure." His lips curl up, smile warming. "Yeah. I'm glad, too. Ain't always that many folks who understand --" He pauses, turning his head up towards the dark night sky, and for a moment it seems like he is ending his sentence there. Until he finishes: "-- how much the world needs a splash more colour." Above, somewhere high over them but indeterminate in origin, perhaps coming from their block or a few blocks over, a streak of light shoots up into the sky. And then explodes in a showering burst of sparks, red fading to orange fading to yellow, a brilliant bloom of firework that erupts with a wealth of colour but no noise. "At this point," Tag replies, "any job that will pay the rent. Hard to be picky when I've got no work experience--nothing verifiable, anyway--and no references that an employer is likely to trust." He looks up, as well. "But I'm not too worried about it. I'm alive, free, and making art. That's pretty good, in my book." He grins at the blossom of light and color in the sky above. "More than just good, actually. Way more." Almost as an afterthought, he adds a sun to the mural, ringing it with two prismatic haloes. Overhead, another burst of light blooms big and bright, purple-blue this time. And then another. And another, expanding into a dragonfly-shape before fading away. "It's good, for sure." Jackson's head turns, just slightly, and in his mirrored glasses the bright-coloured fireworks overhead are reflected in small flares of colour. He looks over the mural with a warmer smile and then slants a sideways glance to Tag, reaching out to take the other's hand and squeeze it, just once. "Alive, free, making art, and in good company. /I'm/ calling this night a win, at least." The silent fireworks continue, lighting the city night with rainbowy flashes.