ArchivedLogs:Shores

Shores
Dramatis Personae Hive, Jim
In Absentia	2014-05-26 '
Location <NYC> Harbor Commons - Courtyard - Lower East Side
It's Memorial Day and the sky is drab and gray with sullen grumbles. Relief from the bitter grip of winter cold now long gone, there's new weather to gripe about for the casual New Yorker, and Jim's mind of clogged brambles follows suit in the rough starts and stops it's damaged surface is prone to. You can tell starkly on days like this when plant side of his mind is winning out - it's /excited/ and responsive to the energy in the air, bright and green and alive. And /annoying/, for the much sharper, spikier-rapid human mind gripping on the mortal present and marching in the eerie unbreathing quiet of heavy footfalls into the courtyard of the Harbor Commons. Just INVADING the place. << Hey, asshole. >> His long has it been since he'd last tracked Hive down? Possibly a while. His grasp of time is SHIT. As is his complexion, half bark and rustling with leaves, it's like some angry forest god in a ratty Hawaiian shirt and flip flops had decided to march on the site, whatever plants dwelling beneath his course blooming and growing in his wake. On most days this lot is noisy, bustling, a rush of workers' voices and a clang of machinery. Today it stands quiet, just the rush of the river going by. This late on it's a strange mix of polished and unfinished . The three rows of private housing that bound the lot look, for all intents and purposes, done, minimalist buildings /growing/ out of the earth in clean lines of wood and stone, the central Common House neat and tall in the middle. Between the buildings though the earth is mostly just bare, torn up and tracked over by months of heavy vehicles rolling through, boots tromping, equipment being lugged in; it's a morass of dirt ruts and mud with occasional wood planking laid over top to make for easier footing. Parked beside the front stoop of one shiny-new-house is a motorized scooter, at the moment devoid of occupant. It's the only sign of habitation here, really. Empty houses waiting to be lived in and just at the moment their blank-staring windows aren't saying /much/. At least not until -- << You want a job, dickweed? >> It bludgeons hammer-heavy into Jim's excited-planty mind, though Hive isn't yet anywhere to be /seen/. Mmm overturned earth, all rich and chunky and brown and free of competition. All that wiggly-vibrant NESTING of roots and shoots settles in, Jim's ankles fraying with new tendrils seeking to burrow in- << Christ it's like the buildings themselves are speaking. >> His human brain blinks back to wakefulness under Hive's drill bit mental contact. ...towards which mental roots hungrily reach towards the familiar instead- << Is that you, God? >> He thinks back more directly, deciding if no one is here to direct him he'll just help himself to poking the fuck around. Rattling a door handle to one of the houses and cupping hands around his face to peer through a window. << Cause if it involves operating heavy machinery, you're gonna get a lotta new souls in Heaven, with my brain like it is. >> Nevermind the bruisey grit accompanying the thought. Driving isn't something Jim's let go of easily. << The buildings do speak. >> The door is locked, that is probably unsurprising. The window shows a view of a clean new entry hall, flooring freshly laid; there's still painter's dropcloth down in one of the adjoining rooms. Over in one of the neighboring houses -- nearest to the river -- there's an upstairs window opening. Or a door, really, tall and glassy set into the full-length windows out onto an upper-level balcony overlooking the river. << Speak to /me/, anyway. >> Hive is slow as he makes his way out onto the balcony. He's in faded old jeans, fraying at their hems where they fall over his workboots. A t-shirt featuring a cartoon image drawn in the style of Calvin and Hobbes walking over a stream on a fallen log, though rather than Calvin and Hobbes it is Gandalf and Frodo. Dark hair grown out now into a short scruff. Leaning heavily on a cane up until the point he leans heavily on the balcony railing. << Dunno. Does your gnarly-ass self count as heavy machinery? >> << I don't do lap dances, if that's what you mean. >> Jim's slow ponderous trek across the grounds deposits him beneath Hive's balcony like the grubby all-male cast of hobo Romeo and Juliette. His gnarled hands finish first, pressing palms to the side of the house and bearing his weight there heavily. ...And /not/ bodily slither-climbing up the wall in a man-sized ivy. Though part of his mind is struggling to remember why this isn't the obvious thing to do. Wood creaks and shifts to tip back his head, some stray eye for aesthetics placing Hive, cane and all, backlit against the steel sky atop the crest of his creation as something that aches and sooths in one. He pulls in a ragged breath, let's out like gravel, "This the part you let down your hair?" "Well, shit. There goes /that/ plan for the housewarming here." Hive is extracting a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, though once he's gotten one out and into his mouth, when it comes time to /light/ it he fumbles with shaking hand at the lighter. Flk flk flk. It isn't lighting. "My hair's as down as it /gets/. You should see the fucking shag carpet Flicker's growing these days. Like he's taking a page out of your hobo book." << Used to have a camera, for shit like -- >> Hive trails off as the lighter goes tumbling from his unsteady hands to fall down off the balcony towards the ground below. "... motherfucker." The unlit cigarette bobs between his lips. << Used to. >> Jim agrees, neutrally. A raised hand over head should make the lighter the easiest catch in history. But Jim's fingers are slow, it bounces off his palm and then off his FACE and to the ground << -jesus fucking christ, jimmy- >> "How's he doing, anyway." Flicker, that is. Jim doesn't wait for a verbal answer, just heads right into the house and strides for the nearest stairs. Hungrily eyeing the details of the empty rooms like he's casing it for a later /robbery/. It takes poking his head in a few rooms (more than necessary, really, he's kind of passively tossing the joint), before he locates the one that services the balcony. The angle is different, with the water stretching out behind Hive, a perspective overlooking the property and another inner pang. Thinking << click. that's the one. >> Lighting one of his own cheap cigarettes WITH Hive's lighter he... offers over the lit smoke. Apparently in exchange for one for himself, "What's the job." Apparently, done being a pain in the ass. For now. << Could, again. >> "S'back on his feet. Little limpy. Walking." << Glad as fuck to be done school, >> transitions smoothly (or, really, rockily, given the slamming bludgeon-nature of Hive's voice) into mental speech as Jim disappears into the house. Inside, what /will/ be Geekhaus one day is airy and open, ash-grey resin floors and exposed stone in the walls, a large sweep of common space on the first floor that is largely not properly divided up into rooms so much as it just has boundaries /suggested/ at by changes of flooring in the kitchen, lower ceiling under where the second-floor balcony sits -- half the room has been left open for the second-floor balcony to look down on the first floor and its enormous floor-to-ceiling windows. The slatted stairway leads up to the hardwood floors of the balcony (There is, also, a fireman's pole running straight through from second floor down to basement, on the other side of the room) where /actual/ rooms branch off the balcony, empty and waiting to be purposed. The balcony runs past two of them, though only one still has its door open to the outside. Hive is slumped further against the railing by the time Jim gets up, bony elbows pressed heavily against it. He plucks his unlit cigarette from his lips, slowly shifting his weight off his arms so that he can extend a shaking hand towards Jim, trading one smoke for the other. His other hand waves -- out towards the grounds around the houses. "S'whole place -- it's pretty much ready, you know. They're still finishing the common house. Installing some cabinets in people's apartments. Doorknobs. Fucking -- finishing -- touches. But Christ have you looked at the grounds here we're way behind where --" He shakes his head, looking back out towards the river. "First week of June, I told them." His fingers curl around the railing as he slumps back in. "Gonna bring Ash in, turn all this fucking mud into -- actual. Fff. I don't know. Put up the stone walls around the place. Lay the paths down. Dig the pond. But all the trees and grass and flowers and -- fff." His eyes fix down on the water. After a beat, almost (-- almost) as an afterthought, he adds, "... Murphy's back in town." Jim is at first just... nodding. Until it slows and he just stands, looking out at the grounds below and - knows he's missing some suggestion, some vein of conversation but it takes what feels like eons with his unlit cigarette hang to get past a listless proud confidence for Ash's ability and some familiar panic that he's slipping fast away to finally get to: "Heh. Groundskeeper Jimmy, huh?" Hammering down down his pulse, he finally lights his own cigarette, his own fingers steady as, well... tree trunks, pulling air and smoke into misfired lungs, and blows a gray cloud out over the Commons, "Could do that. Just need a few seeds to start with. Maybe some throw away shrubs." For him to CANNIBALIZE. The numb-buzzing panic-frustration doesn't really FADE to hear Hive's last words. His lips compress harder on his filter, making a growly rumble of: "How's he looking?" "Yeah. I'll get you fucking overalls and everything. -- I'm gonna let you talk to the fucking. Country boys about seeds and shit, yeah? I know shit-all about plants. Jax and Micah, they know what's up. I'll give them a budget and they can procure you whatever the fuck and let you know a general idea of what's -- where." He sucks a long pull from his smoke, slumping lower to drop his chin to the balcony railing before he finally exhales in twin heavy streams of grey from his nostrils. "... shitty." There's a wave in Jim bitterly impressed that a job still exists even he's not likely to fuck up. Thinking of days not long past of sprinting through Chinatown with Murphy at his back, bullets pinging off cars. Or crawling through the sewer systems with... Hard blue eyes are fallen on Hive's slumped form, and he streams smoke smoke up at the heavens, "Always was pretty good at keeping up, Murph." He crams cigarette into the corner of his mouth and slumps down alongside the other man. << Speaking of men plagued with unfortunate memories. >> "'S Memorial Day." As if the vacant grounds below weren't a SLIGHT hint. "Sic'd him on tracking down the fucking. Vermont. Lab. Hunt for it." Hive pulls another hungry drag from his smoke, long knobby-bony fingers shaking against the slim white stick. "Poked him off Lucien's way, too. I swear every fucking body needs their brain tinkered with, lately." His eyes close, and his snort at the mention of the holiday comes with a small cloud of smoke. "How could I forget?" The bruising in the central black pit of Jim's mind coils in tighter, bleaker. "...Murph's good." He says it hard, firm. << -more good than i'd fucking be- >> He drags /hard/ on his cigarette, with a thumb and forefinger pinched hard on it. Staring out at the lawn. "Y'doing anything?" Hive's eyes narrow out towards the river. The shaking in his fingers grows. Something prickles, sharp and needling in hardened armoring spikes up against the surface of Jim's mind, and then subsides. "... Remembering." The side of Jim's face tightens for the press of spikes; there's no understanding for why it's happening. The meaningless of it is apparently easier than finding the energy to pursue. Instead looking at the side of Hive's head, the shake of his fingers. Tone remaining flat as any other topic: "Alone?" Hive's other hand lifts, fingers skimming their habitually ingrained path along the side of his head. His thumb taps at the end of his cigarette, though it's hard to say if he's deliberately ashing it or if it's just a residual tremor. His head shakes, and he's quiet as he returns the cigarette to his lips. Outwardly, at least. This time the press of his mind to Jim's comes with sterile imagery. Bright operating-theater lights and cold metal tables and characterless faces hidden behind surgical masks. "... You?" The introduction of such a cold sterile image, in this organic place smelling of wet earth, fresh paint, cut wood, rubber, city, makes a sharp cutting island between the men's minds. The flood of adrenaline and hardening stomach muscles puts something more starkly human in Jim. Alert and careful, it… checks any initial protective urge to leap to, stop, fight, reject (/scream/)-- He places his cigarette back in his mouth, and instead lowers his head, and like an offered hand to carry a weight, gives the image a few inches to expand. Grimly wondering, somewhat to himself as much as Hive. << (this was)(scar)(chip)(that time?) >> His answer only comes in she shake of a head. A shrug. A suggestion of deep underground tunnels in the chill of the morning, where once shadows had traced understanding palms through his branches and whispered '-James-.' Hive stays quiet, still. Digging his pack of cigarettes out of his pocket again so that he can get himself a second, light it off the dying butt of the first though it takes a few tries for him to get them to connect. He stumps out the butt against the railing, thoroughly, but shoves it afterwards into his pocket, rubbing his wrist against the spot he just extinguished it in until it is clean once more. And now he just shakes his head, looking back out towards the river, his mind leaning up against Jim's in a slow settling that takes in that suggestion and lets it quietly echo there for a moment. In silence, he passes a second cigarette over to Jim, too. And lets his gaze drift back to the river passing them by below. Jim just puts his cigarette out on his tough barky arm and tucks the spent filter behind an ear. Picks some bit of debris off the tip of his tongue. Accepts the second cigarette. And, where Hive's mind rests against his, after a moment of wrestling with pride, with shame, he eases his own weight back in return. It's nothing beautiful happening in these moments; nothing even sad, or anguished or angry. Just ugly and tired. Fueled by nicotine and and broken minds, washing up on the shores of memoria.