ArchivedLogs:Sick and Hurt

Sick and Hurt
Dramatis Personae Jax, Tag	2015-11-01 "Seems almost a shame to throw out such pretty -- uh. Dirt."
Location <NYC> {Lighthaus} - Harbor Commons - Lower East Side
Bright and sunny-light, this house lives up to its name. With a plethora of enormous windows flooding the place with light and an open layout, the ground floor feels more spacious than it is. The small entryway has a closet space for shoes and coats, and doors at either side leading to the neighboring apartments. Past this it opens straight into the living room, a wide expanse of space bordered on one side by a curved set of stairs leading up (with colourful glass tiling on the risers between each stair) and next to these, the half-wall into the kitchen. Cool pale tile underfoot and many dark cabinets with a small walk-in pantry, plentiful custom granite countertops, black and speckled faintly with rainbowy flecks, lots of hanging space overhead for cookware, a large double-oven. There's a strip of rather detailed mosaic-work in the kitchen backsplash, colourful glass tiling depicting strange fantastical herbs and small faeries and firelizards darting among them. In back of the kitchen, a door opens up to a small sunroom, wide and two-stories high with a balcony overlook from the second floor; two of the windows here have cushioned windowseats, and there's a wealth of herbs growing in hanging pots and small window-boxes. The back wall of the living room is nearly entirely dominated by windows, huge and allowing a view of the river beyond with bench windowseats lining the sills. There are plentiful paintings on the wall, surreal and fantasy-inspired, mostly in shades of blacks greys with bright bursts of colour that are mirrored in the decor -- monochrome upholstery on the couch and armchair but colourful throw-pillows, black and white huge corduroy beanbags (and one large red doggie-bed,) soft throw rugs also in mostly black and white with splashes of rainbow woven in. The hand-built furniture -- tall chairs by the kitchen/living room counter, dining table and chairs in the kitchen, low coffeetable in the living room -- has been hand-painted as well, black with bursts of colourful abstract designs. Along the living room's other wall, doors branch off to a full bathroom -- in white and deep blue with one wall of the shower done in colourful intricate mosaic too, an underwater scene full of strange mythical water-creatures; tiny water-sprites have been interspersed at random points in the rest of the wall tiles, as well. There's a small studio space beside the bathroom, large windows as well and a gratuitous amount of shelving and cabinets along the walls; this room has very /little/ colour in it, just white walls and black furnishing. The afternoon is pleasant and warm enough to invite open windows, though the breeze is cool enough that most people outside will want some sort of jacket. The colors in Lighthaus house are always in flux, but today a rather larger percentage of random household items have received new shades and patterns, some in autumnal palattes but most just randomly bright with interludes of iridescence, pealescence and metallic foil. The cause of these changes is himself a storm of shifting colors sweeping through the house. At the moment, the sweeping is literal as he herds a small pile of (shimmery!) debris into a dust pan. His now longish rainbow hair is gathered back in a glittery black bandana. His tattered t-shirt is a gradient of pale sky blue at the collar, deepening almost to black at the hem where stars begin to appear just before giving way to a bright purple skirt bedecked with holographic rainbow sequins. Emptying the dust pan into the trash and stowing these supplies, he sprints to the kitchen counter just in time to cut off the beeping of his phone and decant a fragrant masala chai into the mugs he had prepared: one green with blue and purple metallic dragonflies, the other black with red and gold maple leaves. "Tea's up!" he chirps, stirring in cashew milk and (for one cup, at least), an uncanny amount of maple syrup. "Seems almost a shame to throw out such pretty -- uh. Dirt." Jax has been tucked into an enormously large poof of beanbag over by the windows in the living room, his drawing tablet in his lap and his laptop in front of him. He's dressed in a soft pink shirt reading 'I'm one of the bravest girls alive', enormously wide-legged black and purple UFO pants, brightly colourful mismatched knee-high socks, his hair freshly recoloured in vibrant fiery autumn hues and his nails black with glittering stars dusted across them. He glances up with a small sniffle and a slightly delayed smile. "Oh! Oh good. Oh, thanks." The words are interrupted by a small cough. "That's -- thanks. Tea's nice. Y'know y'don't gotta do /all/ this, honey-honey, the tea an' everything's /plenty/ without cleanin' my entire house." "Welcome." Tag delivers the dragonfly mug into Jax's waiting hands and folds himself onto the floor beside the beanbag, basking in the sun. "I know." He flops his head sidelong onto the poof and looks up at Jax. "But you're sick and hurt and if I didn't do it, you would've." His smile is a little wan, and his fuchsia eyebrows wrinkle faintly over matching eyes. "And you've been mad stressed even before that. I just..." He trails off, then suddenly rallies with a crooked grin, "...I didn't clean the *entire* house, c'mon." "It was one small bite," okay one large deep nasty bite from a zombie trying to eat him but who's counting? Jax still protests this descriptor of 'sick and hurt' kind of /indignantly/ (while snuffling) (around another cough) while sinking back with a shiver into the beanbag.) "You're jus' doin' so much an' I'm. I'm fine, I jus'." He sniffles again, setting his tablet aside and curling his hands around his tea. "...thanks." Twisting himself around so that he's leaning on the poof like a merman half out of the sea, Tag shoots Jax the Most Skeptical Look. "You were sick enough to be off work even *before* the chomping, though. Right?" Though he doesn't actually should all that confident about it now. "But, I mean...I shouldn't be presumptuous 'bout what you need." He subsides a little, leaning his forehead on the other man's knee earnestly. "So...is there anything you need, that I can do?" "I was?" Jax looks confused, for a moment, at this. Then a slow understanding dawns, his cheeks flushing deeply crimson. "Oh -- oh, gosh. No, I --" His eye lowers, fingers tightening around his cup. "I wasn't, I didn't, I was fine. I jus'." His nose crinkles up. "I -- quit. The Clinic. Last week. So kinda -- suddenly had a fair bit more free time, lately." "Oh!" Tag's frown is both worried *and* perplexed now. "Did something happen that...I mean obviously *something* did. But...does this have anything to do with Io quitting. Or, getting fired. Or suspended or whatever they're calling it?" He rolls onto his knees, holding his tea close to his chest like a squirrel with a nut. Jax swallows, a faint curl of shadow twining itself around his arms. He dips his head, taking a small sip of tea. "Yeah." There's a small shake to his hands, a more noticeable one to the breath that he pulls in. "He an' Rasheed both been suspended. Or somethin'. I don't -- know. It's a mess. It." He shakes his head hard. "We found out Rasheed been workin' for Prometheus." Tag's eyes open very wide, and the color starts drains from his hair and clothes. Nothing quite goes bone white, but enough, at least, that he looks faded. He slowly sinks back to sit on his heels. "Rasheed?" It's barely a question. His voice isn't incredulous. There's a hollow pleading tone to it, but he doesn't ask if it's true, doesn't ask to be *told* it's not true. "That's...like a punch in the gut." He lifts his eyes again, pulling the bandana from his head. Locks of icy pale purple hair fall across his face. "But if you found that out, does that mean you got leads? On the rest that were still in the labs when they got quote-shut-down-unquote?" "It was -- yeah. It didn't... feel. Good. It... I don't even. All this time, he..." Jax's head shakes again. "An' Io, he done knowed about it for months. An' ain't said nothin'." He slowly lifts his glass, takes another sip. "We don't got -- well, Dusk's had. Leads. But that was separate. He was workin' so hard. Rasheed'll probably know, though. Or know people who know. As high up as he was, he /must/ still got contacts." "Contacts he's gonna try and use to save his own sorry ass, I bet." Tag worries at the brim of his cup without drinking from it. "Who's gonna...I mean is someone gonna go and just *ask* him or just..." He taps his side of his skull with an index finger, multichrome metallic nails catching and reflecting light in an unreal spectrum of hues unaffected as yet by the slow bleed of colors from the rest of him. "S'far as I can tell half my team wants t'never see him again an' the other half wants t'murder him so who knows." Jax sounds tired. His head thuds back against the pouf. "But there's a couple'a folk good at, uh. At gettin' -- int' people's. Heads. I don't. Don't /envy/ them that work, that's." He shudders, a deeper shift of darkness twining around his arms. "Not a head I'd want t'be in right about now. Or -- ever. Can you imagine? I don't /want/ t'imagine. Everythin' he been doin'. /Ugh/." "I probably can imagine. To his mind, I'm sure the horrors are all sterilized, pasted over with banal ratonalizations. Dunno how he could live with himself otherwise." He takes a big gulp of his tea. "Didn't mean to make you go through all this, again," he mutters quietly. "You're still *sick,* you don't need me giving you the third degree about this. Maybe I should..." He looks up and around. "...clean some more? "Mmm-mmm." Jax shakes his head, nestling further back into the squishy large cushion. "You should jus' stay right here." Quieter, "... please." Tag had started to rise, but then stops. For a fraction of a second he hesitates, as if about to give some reason why he oughtn't, but then he plants himself down on the poof beside Jax. "Alright," he says, his voice quiet but confident now, however narrow the scope of this confidence. "Not goin' anywhere."