ArchivedLogs:Silent Partners

Silent Partners
Dramatis Personae Cage, Hive
In Absentia	2014-01-29 '
Location <NYC> Rang Phueng Design - SoHo
Located on the third floor of a narrow brick-faced office building in SoHo, the lobby of Rang Phueng Design/J.M. Investigations is a comfortable place to wait. There are a number of paintings hung on the walls, brightly colored though somewhat fantastical cityscapes. A large aquarium on one wall, clean and carefully tended, hosts brightly colored marine life swimming through a number of plants and coral. The table amid all the couches has a sampling of architectural magazines as well as popular ones, magazines and newspapers generally actually up to date. The receptionist desk is a large black wood one, though it is unmanned. Through the door in back of the lobby is a large workshop space, spacious drafting tables, a number of glass-topped desks though only one of them boasts a computer. Walls painted white and paneled in glass turn most of the wallspace into whiteboard, generally covered with notes and measurements. The back wall's large windows look out onto the streets. Two side doors lead to smaller offices; one stands open and unfurnished, the other, closed, has been given -- no name plaque, yet. Just a tacked-up piece of paper reading "J.M. Investigations". It's actually morning. You can tell because there's a bleak dark RAINCLOUD storming over Hive's head. Actually, he's not even awake. He probably should be. He's obtained himself a coffee from the Keurig machine in the waiting room and set it on a coaster on one of his worktables in the back but now he's just facedown on his folded arm one a table in the back. He's seated at his computer, in jeans, workboots, a dark blue sweatshirt with blue raincloud on its belly as well, raining down red hearts and blue raindrops. Rather than working, though, he's just. Faceplanted. Kind of on his keyboard. There's schematics pulled up on his screen that he's half in the middle of -- some sort of office building. He must not have been here for long, his coffee is still piping hot. Luke Cage shows up at Hive's building incognito for once. There's no Humvee, no strutting entrance. Just a man in jeans, black biker boots, and a dark gray zip-up hoodie with the hood pulled up. He enters the office and pulls back his hood with his free hand. The other hand is carrying plain white coffee cup of indeterminate origin. "Uh, hello?" Luke calls out. He's not shouting, but his voice projects naturally. There's a shuffling from the back. A /grumbling/. More shuffling. The door to the large workshop space opens, finally. A very /bleary/ head pokes out; Hive has a way of looking permanently /sleepy/ whether or not he actually is. Given that it's before noon today -- he probably is. This rarely stops his /mind/ from being very much /aware/ of he other minds around him even when his heavy-lidded eyes look like they're barely open at all. "Do you want coffee?" he grunts in greeting. << Huh, not what I expected. >> Luke holds up the cup he brought and shakes his head. "Oh uh, no thanks. Brought my own." Luke's mind is briefly concerned with threat assessments around the room, and escape routes, but it's more of an autonomic process than something he's actively thinking about. He stands a little awkwardly in the little lobby and rubs at his goatee briefly. "So, you're Hive?" "What did you expect." Hive nudges the workshop door open wider, jerking his head back in invitation to enter the workspace. He's rubbing at his eyes with bony knuckles -- bony everything really, it's rather obvious that his clothing doesn't sit /well/ on him, sweatshirt hanging far too loose on his bony shoulders, jeans hanging low on his hips even /with/ new holes punched /way/ farther back in his belt. He is beelining back for his computer. His own coffee beside it. He needs to push the sweatshirt sleeves back up on (bony) wrists to /find/ his hands again so that he can hold the cup and drink. "Yeah. Me. Hive. Yo. Sup." His tone is gruff, his accent -- hard to place, clearly Not New York but past that a bastardized mutt that doesn't really tell of anywhere distinct. "And this is my company." "Huh?" Luke asks, confused by the question. It doesn't even enter his mind that Hive could be a telepath and he just interprets the comment as a non-sequitur. Then he shakes his head and follows Hive back to his office. << Relax and be nice. No one followed. Not on a clock. Take it easy. >> "Yeah, what's up, man. So, two things first: thanks for emailing me, and thanks for meeting with me this morning. I appreciate what you all are doing, and I know you must be busy." His mind pulses with an ardent sincerity, and the man is completely focused on the conversation. A lot of people cycle through what they're going to say next, just waiting for their turn to talk, but when he finishes what he has to say his attention is one-hundred percent focused on the other person speaking. For many this probably makes it seem like Luke can be slow to speak, but he's actually just listening and processing what's been said. "Not what you expected?" Hive explains, with a gesture -- around the office? To himself? His hand is noticeably shaky; the gesture is kind of vague. /He's/ noticeably shaky, which might, more than any inherent rudeness, be why he takes his seat /first/ before gesturing Luke into a spare one. He presses forefinger and thumb to the bridge of his nose, and then lowers his hand to his coffee, summoning up a small smile. He hooks one leg up onto his chair, knee crooked up towards his chest. Palm braced against his desk, he rocks the chair absently to and fro as he nods. "Nah. We appreciate /your/ interest in helping. Been kinda a shitty time around here, y'know? Hard enough to find --" He trails off slowly, shaking his head again. "How much do you know about the project? Do you want an overview of what we're doing?" Luke follows Hive's gesture, looking around, and then his eyebrows go up, possibilities filtering through his brain, checking each against what he considers likely. "Shit, did you, I mean, can you read my mind?" Luke reminds himself to keep working on curbing his cussing and continues, "I just meant, um, this place is really nice. A lot of mutant business owners have trouble getting nicer business spaces." There's also an undercurrent of being worried about the man's sickly-thin appearance, but he tamps that down as a matter of course. The man has old fashioned manners, even if he does forget them half the time. "Um, yeah actually, I could use a run down. I talked to Jax for maybe five minutes about it one time. Back before the assholes took him in." Luke shakes his head, his mind seething a great deal more than his outward manner. "Yep." Hive's forefinger taps against his temple in indication as to what answer he is confirming, with this. "And this place was my bonus. After finishing the Mendel Clinic. It worked out pretty sweet for us all around. The landlord was a donor of theirs so he wrote it off on taxes, they got off easier than cutting me a fat-ass check like they normally would for a bonus on a gigantic fucking project like that, and I got a sick workspace. Pretty much a win for everyone." He grimaces, too, at the mention of Jax. "-- Fucking bastards should've been giving him a goddamn medal after that zombie shit and instead --" He shudders, glowering into his coffee. Rerouting his thoughts onto the /actual/ business at hand seems to perk him back up, though. "Right. So. This thing. Cohousing. It's like for people who want to have all their cakes and eat it too." A smile slips across Hive's face, bright and warm; for a moment it makes it easier to overlook the gaunt hollowness in his cheeks, the dark circles under his eyes; his expression just /lights/ as he starts to pull up the plans he's been working on. "So the idea is you get the benefits of having some privacy of your own, but a bit of the the sense of /community/ and some of the eco-friendly benefits of cooperative living, too." His cursor traces over the screen as he highlights the design to Cage. "The plot we've put a bid on is in the Lower East Side down by the river. The idea is the individual houses -- and I mean, these are still largely gonna be rowhomes so it'll /mostly/ be duplexes and triplexes with maybe only a /couple/ actually single units -- will ring the central space. And that's where everyone has their own private living area. And in here, see, all the private space has shared access to -- community space." His cursor shifts over the central space, some of it open, some of it in a larger central building. "In the outdoor space we can put things like a shared community garden. Fucking -- chicken coop, who the fuck knows. The central building, people want stuff like shared kitchen, dining space, exercise room, game space. Playroom for kids. Guest rooms. Music practice room. That kind of thing. Shared community space for people to -- use! And everyone's going to decide what the collective-use rooms will be for -- together. S'kinda a group effort." A whole layer of Luke's mind seems to unfold and relax when Hive sets into cussing properly. He's in good company. He is genuinely impressed by the office space, a mental image flitting through of his own office fitting in the lobby here. His comparison is probably inaccurate, but it amuses him as much as anything else. "Goddamn right he's a hero," Luke says when Hive mentions Jax. "Should make him fuckin' mayor." He shakes his head and sips his coffee. Through the whole explanation Luke's mind drifts through some interesting mental images: hippy communes, coops in the Village, The Shire from the Lord of the Rings movies. All of these are accompanied by mixed emotions, but he is more and more enthusiastic as Hive explains. "Well /shit/ man, that sounds great. All of it, really. I mean, a lot of it is stuff I've never even thought about before, but it sounds like it could really work." Luke shifts in his chair, sets his coffee down on the floor between his feet and leans forward, elbows on knees. "So, I wanna explain wanting to come meet you in person. First, I didn't want you all get tied up in the Luke Cage / Heroes for Hire bullshit. That's all... my problem and I didn't wanna bog down your project with fucking TMZ wanting to know why I'm involved, you know? So at the very least, it's probably smartest if I come in as a silent partner." He clears his throat, picks up the coffee to take a sip, but then sets it down again. "But honestly, I'm thinking the whole thing would benefit from some subterfuge." He pronounces the word 'subterfuge' slowly, like he enjoys just saying it. "We set up a shell company, something based overseas. Funnel our cash in, and hire a local agent through channels and lawyers. I know a couple decent ones." Luke smirks at his experience with lawyers, and continues. "I don't wanna tell you all how to do your business, but I'm thinking we'll hit a lot fewer roadblocks for permits, and licensing and every other damn thing if it doesn't look like a bunch of terrorist mutants wanting to do business. Once everything is place we can just say fuck it, because we already own the thing. But to get it built..." he shrugs, picks up his coffee and sits back. "I mean, it's cool shit because so much of it is like. Individually nobody could fucking afford living somewhere with any of that crap but if you all get together --" Hive shrugs a shoulder. "I did promise someone a hobbit hole," he adds, at the idle Shire comparison that drifts through luke's mind. He presses his knee up to the edge of his desk, rocking his chair back again and letting his sweatshirt sleeves fall once more to cover his hands. He picks up his coffee in sleeve-covered hands, scooping it up to take a slow sip. "I know shitall for lawyers," he adds with a crooked grin. "But fuck if we sure could use the cash. Permits, mostly, will be a bitch. Getting bogged down in that crap is going to take more time, I'm expecting, than getting the actual building done. Just going to sit there with an empty lot waiting for them to let me put houses on it." Luke nods, and then cracks a smile which is only slightly embarrassed about the hobbit hole. A tiny amount of hidden nerd cred, but Hive will certainly keep Luke's secret. "Well look, I'm no Tony Stark, but I got a little money. And I'll be fucked if this isn't pretty much /exactly/ what I've been saving for. We can help a /lot/ of people here, maybe even get some people off the streets that can't get a place just because they got wings and shit." Luke watches Hive tip back again and actually frets about the frail man tipping over backwards but doesn't say anything. "Well look, the shell company approach - that's how the mobsters get anything done. And I know some guys who could hook us up with the right connections. I'm happy to put cash in the game, but if you want, I can see about shielding the project from some of the bullshit we're bound for. Just make us look like... I dunno, some random European investors or some shit, you know?" "That would be. The most excellent of excellent because, I'll be straight with you I don't know shit about shit, you know. People hire me, they pay me to design their buildings, I design their buildings. That's what I do, all that other crap -- that's not my deal. And if you could wrangle it so that it looks like -- I don't even fucking care what it looks like," Hive admits, "so long as I get to build the fucking homes, and at the end of it, our people get to own their own damn homes and nobody --" He bites down on his lip, shaking his head hard. "You know, you got wings, or fangs, or green skin or whatever the fuck, chances are you've never had a fucking home of your own in your life. And this shit I'm doing --" He waves a hand towards his computer screen. "I'm just trying to give people that for once. Because these motherfuckers came in and took that away. And if you could set it up so that we can get the permits and all and then buy these buildings and no-fucking-body can steal these damn homes from them, that's --" Hive's chair rocks back downward, hand scuffing against his hair. "Whole fucking reason I want this done, you know?" Luke's mind is setting off fireworks of agreement before Hive is even done speaking. "Hell yeah, Hive. Leave it to me, and I'll get things going. It'll take a little time, but trust me, this can work. And you're right, everyone deserves a chance to have their own space. And maybe if we can get things working right with this whole set up... The rest of New York will have to sit up and take notice." Luke thumps his fist down on the arm of the chair and accidentally warps the armrest a little. His mind is awash with a growing to-do list of who to contact, who's arm will need some twisting, and a whole host of other things. He stands up and offers Hive his hand, and an embarrassed smile. "{Sorry} about the chair," he says with a shrug. "I'll check in weekly or so. I'll make up a new email. But don't send anything else to the Heroes address, ok? I just wanna screen you from all that." "Whatever. Cheap Ikea shit," Hive answers dismissively, snorting. He pushes to his feet, clasping Luke's offered hand in a bony squeeze. "Thanks, man. I mean it. You got my info, drop me a link when you got a new address. I'll keep you posted on our progress, for sure."