ArchivedLogs:Pulling Up Roots

Pulling Up Roots
Dramatis Personae Hive, Jim
In Absentia	2013-08-21 '
Location <NYC> Creative Little Garden - Lower East Side
One mental swell amongst many is easy to miss; a voice in the crowd, cycling against many overlapping minds is clenched down like a /fist/, and it hammers. Hammers. /Hammers/ at the invisible calls, calling out in the rawhide rail of Jim's mental voice. << -ve. hive. HIVE. >> It's reaching out and GRASPING. Yanking. Pulling. Hive's mental presence isn't so much easy to pick out of the crowd as it is the foundation /to/ it; he is often relatively careful about keeping it more or less segmented off from excess leakage but today that foundation has been a /rocky/ one. Coiling tight underfoot into a black curling ball of /hate/. -- Or maybe tears? It's somewhat ambiguous. Tighten. Stutter-hitch. /Tighten/. It tightens again at that grasping, a reflexive prickly /jerk/ away that responds, afterwards, with a /swatting/ back. << ggaaahh jegus whatthefuck. >> It rouses crankily, less like a slumbering dragon and more like an irritable hedgehog /huffing/ up in its ball of ineffectually small prickles. << Is someone shooting you again? >> Jim's mind is... /not/ mindless destruction - it has the mind's full, heavy /dedication/ behind it. That almost makes it worse. It's HEAVY. Braced in deep and hard and only steadily ripping its way inward, deeper, in on itself. The grip he's making at Hive doesn't seem to even be entirely noticing it's doing so. The hedgehog-prickling only makes him grip at it harder, swinging focus to it in a single moment of /mutual/ tightening a clench of stomach muscles. << Be /easier/ if someone was, wouldn't it. >> He sounds savagely /okay/ with this idea. Not happy. But OKAY with it, WHY NOT. << Where are you. >> << You travel much? >> It's not an answer but it's what Jim gets, at first. Hive's bizarre melange-accent is thickening, here; in its default state its an unplaceable concoction just heavy enough to note him as Not From Around Here and light enough to not stand out as anywhere near Fresh Off the Boat, but it's leaning more that way for moment; somewhere in background-consciousness there's a vague awareness of a phonecall. Thai, in rapid back-and-forth. << Out of the country, I mean, fucking Ohio doesn't count for shit. >> Mutual tightening meets with /more/ prickles. Spiny-sharp, digging /in/ to take spiky firm /hold/. << I could shoot at you if you're feeling nostalgic. When'd you last bathe, asshole? We're getting Thai. >> << Never really got around to it. >> Something around Jim's physical existence picks up a sense of /momentum/. Striding down the nighttime sidewalk like he's sort of hoping something /does/ try to get in his way. Small snippets; dirty apartments, the smell of booze and cigarettes, camera flashes and dark rooms, sleeping in the back of a car and coffee spots on report papers. Different places, different faces, all behind a thick blur and all of it /tossed aside/ as quickly as it comes up. << Always found other shit to spend money on. >> Against a far more immediate /awareness/ of Hive's shifting accent, the snippet of phone call, are somewhere between worrying and - frustrating. What does it mean. Fuck. He doesn't know. But /Thai/ food. Fine. He understands mother fucking Thai food. The tight hold the telepath's mind is clamping down is getting far far more of his dedication, distracting itself from the inward tearing to -- yank/rip/push/shove at Hive's instead. Something to sink his teeth into. << Didn't get time to find a /shower/. You wanna see my crotch shampoo'd you'll have to fucking do it yourself. >> LONG PAUSE. << -shit, where the fuck am I going. >> << No shower. Man. Fucking seriously. Sewer sludge. Fine. Guess we're not going somewhere with a fucking /dress code/. >> Because Hive owns so many dinner jackets, himself. He doesn't, actually, tell Jim where he is. Nor does he tell Jim where he's going. But in some quiet collective consciousness knowledge that trickles down anyway, Jim /knows/ where he is going. Not in destination, really, and not even in a concrete path -- just in a vague direction that /guides/ his route through the city almost without even thinking about it. Whenever he arrives at where his quiet mental map is taking him, it's not a restaurant but a park in the East Village. Not the one across from the Lofts where the Lofties spend so much of their time; smaller, quieter, /greener/, lacking in playgrounds and, at this hour, people -- it's technically /closed/ -- just a neat tended oasis of plantlife tucked quietly into the city. Hive is there already. With a large brown paper bag sitting on the ground at his feet where he has slumped himself onto a bench, /scowling/ at a tree like it's pissed him off. The walk passes by at an indefinite length of time; Jim prowls, mind a low steady mutter of formless, nearly wordless vitriol. Just - the smell of his cigarettes. The stink of the city. The slap of his battered shoes on pavement. Inward, deep sharp roots, tearing apart the ground. For all his black mood, he is /healthy/. When he strides into the small park, plant roots can be heard subtly swelling, tearing apart the dirt in light squeals, and leaves rustle as they fan out along the line of the path as he passes them. He's not slowing when he nears Hive - his hands fist up in the smaller man's shirt front. To try and drag him to his feet. Hive doesn't exactly resist the dragging, but he's not helping it along either. Just a listless loose confederation of bones that slump in Jim's hands, his scowl reverting to the moving tree instead of the stably rooted one. His eyes are dark, shadowed around beneath them and reddened at their edges. "The fuck," he grumbles. "There is dinner this is /not/ eating -- fucking dinner." Jim /ignores/ Hive for a minute, big jaw pushed forward and - well fuck. He was angry. He /is/ angry, bristling inner spines pushing through his vines, and now that he's here he has no actual plan. He hauls the loose confederacy of Hivescrawn forward and inflicts on him what he's been yanking at the connection all this time /trying/ to do. -- He tosses arms around him and GRIPS. "Don't make it weird." << like popping a /boner/ or someshit. >> Hive /does/ make it weird. No /boners/ and, really, nothing even so overt as breaking down sobbing although there's /been/ the shaky hitching /edge/ of it threatening the edges of his /ire/ for the past while. But his fingers fist up in Jim's shirt, weight settling forward for just a moment in a boneless /exhausted/ sag that comes with -- well, still no boner on his bon/y/ lean, but a very heavy wordless-hungry sense of << (want) >> somewhere too deep-rooted to even /think/ of refusing to vocalize. His breathing is even enough, his shoulders don't /shake/, but when he straightens there has been definite /damp/ left on Jim's shirt. "You know what's the fuck of it. Is these goddamn. Idealistic. Save the world hero motherfuckers." Hive's pulled back, but his fingers still curl tight into Jim's shirt. "They don't think this'll get better any more than we do." There's nothing gentle in any of it; there are no thorns or sharp spearing branches to KILL anyone with, but Jim was never built soft and the clutch he puts on Hive is hard and angry and -- << (i know.) >> defensive. Of self or otherwise doesn't even seem to really matter. He lets Hive just kind of /slide/ loose, back into the bench, dropping down beside him without shrugging loose the grip on his shirt. His hands hang loose between his thighs. "And they're gonna fucking do it anyway." He states, /staring/ forward. The plantlife around them is thriving, shifting. The grass growing taller. The back of his mind is teeming with halfformed thoughts - a swirl of shadow, subtly twisting into a woman's curves; the gnarled deadly fingers of an old man. But the forefront most part of his thoughts doesn't currently /care/ because it also doesn't /want/ to. "Or die trying." Hive slouches back down onto the bench in a loose slump, heels skittering gravel out along the path as his legs slide out in front of him. The back of /his/ thoughts just churn with /other/ people's minds, going about their business blissfully unaware of their cranky telepathic passenger. In front he weaves his way almost absently through Jim's mindscape, picking his way from one inchoate thought to the next and then slouching back down to settle into that forebrained not-caring. "And die trying." It's a mild correction, bland and weary as he leans down to drag up the bag of food that steams slightly as he unrolls its twined-together paper handles, untucks its folded-closed top. His not-caring doesn't last overlong; in his mind Flicker's face surfaces relentlessly. Cheerful boyish-pretty as it once was, the pitted lopsided ruin of waxy scars that etch it now. Some bleakly /bitter/ attempt at amusing himself with the thought that at least it has spared the celibate student from finding polite ways to reject the frequent advances he /used/ to get. He thunks a small carton of presumably appetizer down into Jim's lap. Skewers of balls of -- some unidentified balls of grilled meat, inside it. Some dipping sauce. His mind /prods/ at Jim's not-caring, prickly again. "-- So'll we." "Yep." Inwardly as much as outwardly, it's all the same in Jim right about now.There are deep old rents over the near-40 years of his life where long swaths are covered in subversive black depression - one that's cycles so far around on itself that it's a /motivation/, something to brace against to push /forward/ to find /more/ to hate. He digs into Hive's /mystery balls/ without wasting effort trying to identify them. It feels good to sink his teeth into something << - christ been a plant for too long fuck forgot about /taste/ so good hive taste this. >> It's a sort of overlapped brooding, all just kind of churning, mixed in the broad (and broadening, from its initially days of unfamiliarity and JimStubborn resistance) mental middle ground where it's all somewhat /one/ mind. Hive's thoughts about Flicker woven through with Jim's own thoughts steadily analyzing and processing /Hive/. He's speaking out loud right now (what does that fucking /mean/); the slight slip of Thai accent; the phone call; the damp spot on his shirt (fuck the sauce whoever invented sauce is a mother fucking genius). He's absently shoving a half-eaten meatball at Hive's face like it was his /own/ (maybe forgetting it /isn't/), and it all internalizes into a flat << what happened, Hivey. >> Like's he's asking /himself/ the question. << Luk chin, >> Hive's mind is absently supplementing in unhelpfully non-English food-identification as Jim takes his first taste of Hive's delicious meaty balls, as though this will help much (they turn out to be a mixed combination of pork and beef, for what it's worth.) << Thought of grabbing you some fertilizer instead. Best Thai place in the whole fucking city, though. And there's a lot of good ones here. >> His hands finally uncurl, falling back to his sides. His thoughts even out, tired but quieter, settling back against Jim's in an infinite /mirror/ of watching each other. For a while it's just quiet. His eyes shift outward to the plants around them, cataloguing their newfound vitality, matching it up against the bleak mindscape it comes from. He opens his mouth without really thinking about it, like it was his /own/ hand lifting when he slides the rest of the one meatball off its skewer. The question tightens him, not just a mental reaction but a physical one, shoulders curling in, stomach clenching in a sudden curl of nausea. The memories that bubble reluctantly up here are not so much visual as snippets of overheard psionic leaking, Dusk's raw grieving anger, Ryan's determination pushing through fear and distress, Jax's sick conflicted struggle ultimately shutting off warmth into detachment. He stoops. Grabs a pair of drinks out of the bag, too. Limeade. He stretches over Jim to set one of the plastic cups on the bench on Jim's other side. "I fucked up." The flood of perceptions from Hive, of Jax, of Dusk or Ryan, is like being dragged across emotional asphalt, and Jim rides it hard without flinching away. Not because it's easy so much as /because/ it's hard. He grits against it, contradictorily settling, solid and deeprooted and stubborn, against his side of the connection. Also physically, /propped/ against Hive like it was a drunk night on the town. << Except not /drunk/. Seriously why aren't we. >> "Fucked up how." He growls it into his drink, like a sprinkle of /dirt/. Then /ingests/ it. Slurp. << That'd -- be an interesting night, wouldn't it. >> Hive turns this concept over /wryly/ in his mind. Jim. slipping into one of those dark-rent blacknesses in his mind, only this one layered over with a gaudy /veneer/ of brittle-bright cheer. Drinking songs. Terrible jokes. Hive's mind tied into this, rapidly spreading /drunkenness/ dragging down the minds of an entire neighborhood, an entire city, New York sinking into a mire of poor judgment and -- << ... wouldn't be that different, I suppose. >> He picks up a skewer of his own. Dips the end into the sauce, teeth slowly working off a piece of grilled meat. "I don't know how to ski." This comes around a mouthful of tender meat, juice dripping down his chin. There are napkins in plenty in the bag in front of them; he wipes the juice away with the back of a hand. "You should teach me. Some time." He taps the tip end of his skewer against his teeth. << You know, it's Ryan's birthday tomorrow. Fucking -- 23. Jax was 22 in June. >> Hive's fingers clench tighter against the wooden stick of his skewer. << Five raids I've followed them on, not counting that shit with the trucks. << Hundred fifty one people. And every time they -- fucking -- pull it off with -- >> The images in his head mostly highlight the anachronism of their lives. Jax in glitter-bright clothes and clubgear, silver makeup, angel wings, slinging drinks; in the kitchen fretting over getting icing /just/ right on his cupcakes; in the park across the street dying snowforts in vivid shades of food coloring. Ryan on stage under the spotlight or at home, eyes closed, losing himself in his violin; sprawled out on the couch high as a kite with two girls he brought home because it's Wednesday night, /why not/; waking up in Jax's apartment because he's probably forgotten yet again which one is his. And the two of them (maybe still on concert clothes, maybe still in glittery clubgear) poring over schedules, blueprints, maps. Briefing their team in Jax's sunny apartment. Exacting grueling long hours of training sessions from all of them. Abandoning all traces of that habitually /fretting/ indecision when it comes time to give /orders/ in the thick of gunfire. << Five raids, hundred fifty-one people since /I've/ been with them. Four of our team dead. >> A grim tired acknowledgment: << -- More than that that we didn't get out. And they're -- fucking -- /friends/ with all of us. Every time they order one of us to -- >> The clenching in him hasn't settled. << Can't even say I don't know how hard it is for them. Because I feel it. And I still -- >> Tired, /angry/ (at himself, at the /world/), he tears another chunk of meatball off his skewer. His thought finishes in memory instead; the conversation earlier that afternoon. /Refusing/ to give them the address for the next facility. Telling them to order him if they wanted it because as their friend he wouldn't. It's the knife-twist wrench of pain that Jackson shuts down in himself when he /gives/ that order that has lodged deepest into his mind, twisting in like a corkscrew and refusing to dislodge itself. "Fucked up like fucked up," is what he says aloud. "Pork or duck?" "There's mountains not far from here..." Jim reaches up, clamps his hand around a branch that's extending too low, the leaves nearly brushing the tops of their heads. It withers back a few inches, curling and drying. Briefly, some inner mental floor topples out at the bottom, into a different life; high altitude, thin crisp air, the silence of the mountains; a younger body, good knees, no /plant matter/ in its muscles, no bullets in its back. The feeling of sailing down a mountainside, fresh white powder thrown up and stinging brilliant icy needles against the face. << -shit, haven't skied in… fifteen years? >> "They're smaller than the Rockies. Fucking - /bunny/ slopes." << harder for skinny bastards to kill themselves. >> For a brief moment, something light, a brief excitement, of Hive sailing along beside with roostertails of snow flying up behind him... It's the surface chatter, the angle his mind takes primary aim at. Beneath is where the rest falls. A mirror reflecting what he's shown, reflexively undercurrent mulling - but where Hive focuses his attentions outward, Jim's doesn't. He pictures /Hive/ in this scenario; in others. In his apartment, in his /bed/, working, playing, eating, day in and out, always with the flow of lives and minds and /secrets/ all flowing through him. << - and how often-- >> He isn't thinking it at Hive. Just to himself, with such broken anger that it's just… dismay. << -- have you ever complained. Or put your foot down. or asked them to go easy on /you/. >> None of it is worth saying. So - skiing. The whistle of rushing cold air, the tension and hard /force/ rushing up through the ankles, straining through the legs, the sense of /power/. And a yearning to /bring/ the bastard there. Turn him loose where you can be stupid and young and risk his life at breakneck speeds << Fuck. >> "/Duck/." "Fucking -- baby mountains. Wimpy shit compared to your old ones. You could teach me. Gorram /bunny/ slopes." Hive digs a pair of plastic lidded cartons out of the bag, frowning at both their clear lids and then offering the botom one to Jim. He sets the other in his lap, his other hand still curled tight around the stick of his skewer. "Don't worry, though. Plenty easy to die fucking /anywhere/." << All the goddamn time, asshole, >> he grumps in answer. << I'm not exactly fucking /quiet/ when I'm pissed. Or I think they're being fucking morons. Or when I need to fuck the hell off from training. That's -- fucking /different/. This isn't -- this /wasn't/ -- >> He hisses out a breath, sharp and angry. The wooden stick in his hand snaps; the hiss sharpens as the prickly splintered edge pokes up against his palm. Irritably, he flings the rest of his kebab across the path into the trees opposite. << They push themselves harder than they push any of /us/. -- No, /fuck/ it, that's not the point either. >> He glares at his palm, brushing a thumb slowly against it. << Asking them to decide between being my friend and -- s'a world of fucking difference than saying I need a goddamn vacation. >> He lifts his cup, frowns at its lack of straw. Pops open the lid to take a long swig of limeade. "-- Need a fucking vacation." His weight sinks back heavily against the bench. Cold air whisles through his mind. A spray of snow pushed up. But here it's just so much frost freezing the quietly churning echoes of his chorusing mental presence into nothing but a still frozen waste. "Don't know where you can ski in frakking August." << It's different and you fucking know it. >> It's so blunt it's nonplussed, not even an argument because there's nothing Jim is out to change Hive's mind on. He's just angry and lashing out at his /container/ of duck. It's not the most effective way to open a container, nearly sending the contents flying out and licking at whatever food /residue/ had gotten on his hands. "Yeah but this is the /good/ way to go. Though some gawky homebody like you'd probably go gimping down the slopes at a snails pace. Getting your god damn skies overlapped." Except that's not what he's thinking of - when Hive's mind begins to grow stale and frost-burned, he yanks at it again. Pushes at him the feel of shoving skiis down perpendicular to a snow run to slow down a descent, shoving down miniature avalanches and FEELING every inch burning through the calves and thighs. The silky inhuman speed, better than driving, better than biking, better than a rollercoaster because it's not by machine. It's silent. Just the soft 'whuff' of air and snow breaking softly around the ski's tips. No greater privacy. "Canada?" He asks distrustful. << It's all snow and -- moose isn't it? Hockey. Maple syrup. >> "Probably break both my legs. Skiing what the fuck. That seems designed to be anti-bones." Hive sucks at the palm of his hand, briefly, sauce there or maybe just the small scratches from the broken kebab stick. His hand drops back downwards to rest on the open rim of his cup, the open container of food in his lap forgotten. Yanking finds a mind slippery-hard as ice to grab onto, cold and unyielding. His thoughts come at a certain level of cool detachment when they wave through the imagery Jim pushes at him, drifting back through it in ghostlike observation. "-- You want a vacation? Moose probably make good kebabs." "I've been on vacation for my entire goddamn life," Jim mutters, the yanking fading off soon enough when it finds no purchase, turning inward again for a generally bitterly nostalgic woolgathering - perplexing for how little resemblance remains between life as it had once been and life as he knows it now. << And two fucking ex-wives in between. Guess that's what happens when you spend your whole life bailing out from one life to the next. >> Followed, quieter, deeper to the heart of his rough-hard warren of roots and dirt. << ...where is there left to bail to, if even the tunnels aren't far enough… >> "What'd you do," he grunts, fumbling at his side for his drink again and nearly knocking it over, "growing up." << Christ, how do you grow up /not/ skiing. Do they even have mountains in fucking Thailand? >> Hive's quiet ghosting presence follows after Jim's inward turning, drifting in muted-faded remove along the pathways from one life to the next (to the next.) << Tunnels, dude, you went from in New York to under it. S'all this -- same -- this fucking city. >> He lifts his cup, too, swigging another gulp of limeade. "Lotta fucking people grow up not skiing, man, not everyone lives in some fucking hippie Colorado tourist trap." << Course we have mountains. Not quite so high as the Rockies, either. >> Jim remembers his duck dish long enough to finger-snabble out a bite and tuck it into a cheek. "Wasn't a tourist trap when I lived there, Chee-chong." << That's not a fucking answer. Christ, man, s'like you focus so hard on everyone /else/ it doesn't leave room to look at yourself. You fucking know /me/, whether I want you to or not. Why the hell's it gotta be one-sided. >> For a while there's silence. Hive's teeth worry against the plastic rim of his cup, his eyes closing, slowly, and his weight settling into a heavier slump that incidentally thuds his shoulder up against Jim's. "It's not because I give a fuck about -- it's just --" Another quiet. "You know. When they almost deported me. The fucking funny thing is. There was this really big fucking part of me that didn't want to fight it. You know why I don't spend much time looking at my own goddamn life? Cuz if I did I'd bail on this shit in two fucking seconds, man. I sat in that cell and shit, Jim. They send me the fuck back to Thailand, I'd have it made. Motherfuckers like Flicker, Joshua -- they leave this, they'd just be trading in for a shitty situation in some other fucking city. Me? Tickets to Thailand are fucking expensive, man, and ICE'd be giving me a free ride home. Where nobody knows I'm a mutant. I'm a fucking engineer, dude. Got a Master's from an Ivy League school. Got a /family/ who gives a shit about me. I'd have job offers lined up in no time. A decent place in Bangkok till then." His mind slides off, now. Into quiet answer, for Jim. It's reluctant, at first -- reluctant /because/ it's pleasant. The conversation, earlier -- one with a sister, back home. Memories, drifting back. Not mountains but seaside, when he was young. A fishing town, small. A lot of time spent on the water. A lot of time spent helping in the fish-market his father ran. A /lot/ of siblings -- all of which he still talks to. Later life in Bangkok, trading quiet-rural for hectic-busy-urban after his father died, but still pleasant. School. Soccer. The faces and personalities of his family lingered on in sharp relief. But his reminiscing just fades off into a shake of his head before /homesickness/ can start to rise. << I don't think about it because on the really tough days it's hard to remember why the /fuck/ I'm goddamn staying in this shit. >> Jim doesn't get soft for the sharing; the relief for -- yeah, these stupid necessary hidden moments is almost painful, but he remains braced to let Hive decide what /he/ wants to show him in his own time, instead of just PLUNGING in and shoving things in his mental pockets. He uses an elbow to, on some other unimportant but painfully necessary plane, press against Hive's side when the telepath increases the bonelessness of his lean. It's possible this is only to indicate he still has some fucking pork he's supposed to be eating. "Yeah." Jim just - pretty much agrees. It turns his stomach, but it's all true, isn't it. God damn. Worse yet, all too easy to see it. Considering Jim used to live that live. << Getting harder these days, keeping my head down. Only getting uglier. >> "But you'd spend every fucking second over there /thinking/ about things over /here/." He tosses a chunk of duck into Hive's container, fishing out a piece of pork to trade out with. Ohgod TASTE, he wants it ALL. "Any of them ever talk about coming out here t'visit?" "Yeah. Sit there and fucking wonder when someone'd email. Tell me they'd blown off Jax's fucking head. Taken Flicker back in a lab. Disappeared the kids again. Or get no word at all. Probably be goddamn worse." Hive only now remembers his food, glaring down at the chunk of duck tossed in among his pork and fishing it out. He scrapes the flesh away from the crisped skin, first, mind filling up with /relish/. "-- Yeah. All the time. I tell them no fucking way. I don't --" << want any of the motherfuckers watching /me/ to fucking watch /them/. >> He crunches into skin, next. << Be nice to go home, though. Some day. You should -- visit. Thailand. Good food there. Nobody's ever shot at me. >> Jim's eyes don't close, but the way they twist nearer into a clenched squint makes it seem some effort to keep his eyes opened and staring evenly at the far distant foliage. Thinking of -- the smell of a fish market and the sea. "Yeah." He tears off a chunk of duck; crispy outer, softer inner, all just kind or YANKED off with the aid of an eyetooth. "Maybe I should." He chews rapidly, swallows. Looks down at the remaining bite in his fingers, rotating it around to locate where he intends to strike next. "Though knowing my luck, I'd /find/ someone to shoot my ass before I was even out of the airport." He's inwardly, automatically braced for the mental echo of gunshots in the forest. When they don't come, he isn't even surprised. And a few degrees, the sturdy-hard immobility of his shoulder, propped against Hive sags /back/ against the telepath. Letting out a long, ragged swath of air, scrubbing a hand over his forehead. << -where would we go first. >> "Pfft, c'mon, man, you can't bring guns into a fucking airport, don't be stupid. The cabbie'd shoot you on your way out." Hive drops the crispy duck skin at the edge of his dish, saving it for /later/. Instead he digs a piece of pork out of his food, smooshes it into some rice to go with it. And something in him relaxes, a notch, when Jim leans back. He shoves his food into his mouth, lips twitching up at their corners. << Get you a fucking hooker, of course. Didn't you know that's all Thailand is? Just. A wall of hookers, end to end. Hear people over here tell it, they're all underage, but I'm sure we could find a nice wrinkly saggy-tits one to fit you if we really search. >> But in the back of his mind this isn't the real answer he's thinking, about returning home; in the back of his mind the answer is a temple; not one of the shiny huge ones all bright solid-gold Buddha statues and swarms of tourists but one small and quiet and unassuming. "Security guys got guns," Jim reminds. Helpfully. << Probably just wander around in fatigues carrying submachine guns. >> He /might/ be thinking of a prison like enviconment with high mortar brick walls and rusted barbed wire fences. Deliberately. AT Hive. All while easing as well, somehow feeling more exhausted, bone-weary and worn out. Or maybe it's not a matter of being 'more' so much as that he's actually /feeling/ it at all. The mutual slumping between the two increases to a propped lean, Jim bracing up Hive but leaning enough to require bracing as well. It frees up his hands to maraud his dinner with fingers, taking breaks for sips of his drink. And maybe that's the state of their minds as well. Jim's expanding vines coil in amongst the humble fixtures of the temple Hive shows. Or maybe just their concept. Sheltering overhanging branches and the soft shush of leaves, foundation fortified by knuckley roots. Chew. Munch. Eventually, Jim fishes into a pocket for his smokes. << Wander around in fatigues carrying submachine guns /just waiting/ to shoot you. >> Hive supplies to Jim's prison-like mental picture electrified fences to the barbed wire. << Whole fucking country's like that. All of it. Ever since Kim Il-sung took over. >> Hive's reaching into a pocket as Jim does, slipping out a lighter to flick it. Hold it up to Jim's cigarette. Thoughtless because it doesn't need to be, just fitting quietly in and around -- maybe not comfortable, certainly not /un/comfortable, but -- /fitting/.