ArchivedLogs:Something To Be Grateful For

Something To Be Grateful For
Dramatis Personae Doug, Dusk	2013-06-27 '
Location <NYC> Village Lofts - Rooftop - East Village
It tends to be windy, up here, but the presence of plastic table and folding chairs suggests that nevertheless building residents occasionally make their way out to this rooftop. With a good view of Tompkins Square Park less than a block away it's a good spot for city-watching. There's a railing around the edge, though it might be possible (if /unwise/) to climb over it to the narrow concrete ledges beyond and from there to the fire escape. Centrally, someone has broken down crates and constructed a small raised-bed garden up here, barren in winter but filled in three other seasons with a small assortment of herbs and vegetables. The concrete wall that rings the roof has been decorated, painted in vivid bright shades by some artistic hand to add colourful cheer to the rooftop. The mural shifts in terrain One wall sports a beach, flecked with grass and seashells and driftwood and shore birds. Beach transitions into meadow, colourful with wildflowers and butterflies and dragonflies; meadow shifts into snow-capped mountains, subsides into piedmont and sprouts into a verdant forest on the fourth, alive with animals. Rain has come and rain has gone and it's a certainty that rain will come again. There are heavy clouds dark on the horizon -- the sun hasn't /quite/ set but it /looks/ like it has, with the stormclouds darkening the sky. There are occasional flashes of lightning far distant, the rumble of thunder taking quite a while to roll its way over to the East Village. Some time soon, it will likely be miserable -- not to mention dangerous -- weather to be standing up on high rooftops. But that is then. For /now/ the lightning is distant; for /now/ the rain is off farther away, and so for now Dusk is outside. Shirtless, to allow his enormous wings freedom, though he has on a pair of khaki shorts. He looks healthier than he usually does. Not sickly-pale. Not skeletally-skinny, slim frame beginning to fill itself out with a sparse padding of flesh. He leans against one side of the rooftop wall, framed between a pair of vine-covered jungle trees on the vibrant mural recently painted up here. There's a cigarette between his fingers, and his wings are stretching wide behind him -- both of them, the left one splinted and taped in place until recently but, apparently, now freed and /restless/ for its confinement. Flex. Streeeetch. It's kind of a large stretch, the span of either one far longer than he is tall. Eventually they settle, draping capelike against his shoulders. A break in the weather is a good thing, especially since the break is also cooler. Maybe it's the lapse in rain that brings Doug up to the roof. Maybe it's the need for fresh air. Probably the latter, since when the blonde emerges through the metal door it's obvious that he's been burning the midnight oil. Dark circles ring his eyes, and his skin looks pale under his blue tank top and white rugby shorts. Also, he doesn't exactly bounce through the door. Instead, he oozes through, letting the door close heavily behind him as he moves towards one of the chairs with a heavy exhale. Does he notice Dusk? Not right away; it's only when he reaches the chair and lowers himself into it that he spots his neighbor. "Oh, hey Dusk," he says, lifting a hand. "I didn't see you there." Spotting Dusk also means that his attention is drawn to the mural, and he wrinkles his brow. "That's new." "Pretty, isn't it?" Dusk has almost certainly noticed Doug's emergence, even without looking in his direction; the roof door is heavy and prone to creaking. At least, he doesn't show any signs of surprise when Doug speaks; it takes a moment longer before he turns, hoisting himself up to sit on the wall with long wings draping down over the edge. "You look like shit, dude." His cigarette gestures in the direction of Doug's face. Upon turning to actually face the other man, though, this statement is somewhat pot-kettle; his own pale skin is marred with bruising dappled against his chest and splotched darker against the faintly stubbled line of his jaw. He doesn't seem particularly /upset/ about any of it, though, looking over Doug's expression instead appraisingly. "It is pretty," Doug agrees, tipping his head to regard it like a patron in an art gallery. "Who did it? It's really well-done." His attention shifts as Dusk pushes himself up onto the wall, and furrows his brow at the other man's appearance. "Yeah, I probably do," he says. "But I've been working my ass off for the last week. I think I've had about six hours of sleep in the last three days." He waves a hand in Dusk's direction, leaning back in his chair with a tightening of his jaw. "You're one to talk, though. What the hell happened to you? Some of those motherfuckers in the park?" "Friend. Doesn't live here. We thought it could use some cheer." Dusk takes a deep drag of his cigarette, turning his head aside to blow the smoke out over the city. "Nahhh this was a friend, too," Dusk says with a sudden sharp baring of fangs in a wide smile. "Though /shit/, it's not really getting better out there, is it?" He exhales a stream of smoke, head shaking. "What's kept you so busy?" Doug bobs his head. "Yeah, it does brighten the place up," he agrees, looking over the image once more. He stretches his legs, then, regarding the toe of one sneaker without any real focus. "A friend did that to you?" he asks, his head lifting sharply. "Must have been some kind of party." He just shakes his head at the question of the state of the city, tipping his head back to look at the clouds. "I've been working on a project for a new client," he says. "It's requiring me to think a little bit outside the box." He tips his head up to offer a small grin. "It's good, though. Challenging. But, on top of my school work and my /other/ clients, it's been a bit of a free-time eater." He waves his hand in the air, vaguely in Dusk's direction. "Other than amiable bruising, how've things been for you, all things considered?" "What kind of project?" Dusk asks with the genuine curiosity of a fellow techie. He chuffs out a quiet breath, head shaking. "Not party. More like training?" One slim shoulder lifts and falls. His wings stretch out wide behind him again, and then fold. "Other than that --" He draws another long breath of cigarette. His eyes shift away, focusing on some patch of deeper shadow in the garden. "Eh," he answers, "Alive. Fed. Paid my rent." "Oh, setting up a network," Doug says. "He's got some specific requirements, although he didn't really know that when he asked me to do it." He lifts his head to offer a wider, more alert sort of grin. "I've been trying to build a mother terminal that can act as a temporary server and also a network hub. It's requiring some real Frankenstein work, to get it doing what I want it to be doing." He lifts a shoulder. "Like I said. Challenging. But the kind of challenging I like." His grin fades as Dusk answers the question, and lifts his eyebrows in an encouraging sort of expression. "At least you can say /that/," he says helpfully. "That's at least something to be grateful for." Dusk's eyes stay focused elsewhere. A faint upward tug twitches at the corners of his mouth. "Grateful," he echoes. "Yeah." His finger taps at the cigarette, letting ash blow off into the wind. "Yeeeah, customers /mostly/ don't actually know what they're asking when they ask you for it, do they? Tell me he had some ridiculous deadline for it, too." Doug huffs a soft laugh, leaning back again. "Not when it comes to what I'm usually hired for, which is beyond them. It's usually stuff like 'I want it to look really cool' or 'I want it to do cool shit when people click on a thing.'" He lifts a hand and wobbles it in the air. "When shit starts to go wrong, they pretty much know /exactly/ what to yell about." He lifts his head at the assumption, and wrinkles his nose in a grimace. "Actually, I shot myself in the foot with it," he admits. "I underestimated the amount of work involved, and gave /myself/ a ridiculous deadline. Thank God for my abilities, or I'd be dead from even /considering/ how much programming that needs to be done after I get the unit up and running to my satisfaction." He grins, dropping his head back. "I let myself get distracted by his bad boy charms." "I'm pretty sure 'I want it to do cool shit' is basically the entire reason everyone gets /into/ programming, to be fair." Dusk draws another long breath of smoke, and then crushes the butt against the roof, flicking it behind him to soar down to the ground eight stories below. "Bad boy charms. Is that really a thing? It sounds like code for 'asshole'. Which -- I've never actually found charming." "Yeah, that's pretty much my reasoning," Doug says, and sits up, pushing his rump back in his chair. "Or was. Now I want to make computers that do cool shit like carry on a conversation with you." His eyebrows hike, and he actually looks like there's a bit of energy in him as he bounces once. "So, 'do cool shit' is still a motivating factor." He grins, and waves a hand at the question. "When they're pretty, it's bad boy charms," he explains with an impish sort of wrinkle of his nose. "Otherwise, they're just assholes. It's a fine line, and subjective at best." He grins. "I also might be a little more generous than most." "I guess when it comes down to it 'do cool shit' is why /most/ things get invented." Dusk leans forward, elbows resting on his knees; it gives his wings room to stretch once more, flexing out wide to their full span and then folding back in. "Iiiii dunno," he hedges, "there's definitely a lot of pretty assholes in the world. I don't --" He considers a moment, evidently needing to actually think about this before deciding, "/think/ I'd want to fuck them." "Like I said," Doug says, grinning up at the other man. "It's subjective." He watches the wing-flex, and the glances up at the darkening sky. "Don't take this the wrong way," he says. "But you /totally/ look like you just stepped out of a comic book, right now." He shrugs apologetically. "I don't think I've seen your wings at full extension before. That's pretty impressive." "Hhhah." Dusk's smile spreads slowly across his face. "The twins were just trying to convince me to be Batman for Halloween. Or Goliath. From Gargoyles. Not the giant." He stretches his wings out again, over fourteen very inconvenient feet wingtip to wingtip, though at least bat-wings instead of bird-wings means they fold /up/ thinner when at rest. "Broke one recently," he says with a shrug, "Kinda came up here to let them /stretch/. Not always enough /room/ inside." "Oh, my God," Doug says, slapping his forehead. "You would make such a fantastic Goliath. I didn't even think about that." He grins and wrinkles his nose. "You're more like Man-Bat than Batman, with those wings," he says after the full stretch, with all the authority his geek cred gives him. "And he was a villain. Go for the hero, if you're going to do it. Goliath all the way." He tips his head. "Broke one? How'd you manage that?" There's a shuffling of feet, and the blonde frowns. "I can imagine," he says. "The apartments aren't really designed for the aeronautically gifted." "Pfft. I think the villain suits better." Dusk folds his wings down in a capelike drape against his shoulders, though underneath his shoulders now stretch and roll slowly. "My housemates say I should be Darkwing Duck, though." This idea makes his lips curl up into a smile. It fades immediately after, with another restless twitch of wings. "Police baton." Doug shakes his head. "Darkwing Duck would be cool, but would only really work if you got someone to be Launchpad or Gosalyn and go with you," he says sagely. "I mean, not that it wouldn't be recognizable, but it's always fun to cosplay in a group." He flashes teeth, suddenly, in a grin, and his eyes glint mischeviously. "Hive would make a good Gosalyn." His humor fades, suddenly, at the explanation, and his brow furrows. "/Fuck/," he growls. "Those stupid motherfuckers. I should go in and /fuck up/ their lives." Dusk snorts, head shaking at the mention of Hive. His eyes shift, back over to the garden, and he chuffs out a noncommital sound. "Wasn't the worst they did," he says, thinner, clipped. And then snorts again. "Yeah. Fucking with the cops works out really well, generally." Doug's own expression falls, and he winces. "Fuck. I'm sorry," he says, rubbing at his slowly coloring face. "I wasn't thinking." There's more rubbing, and he shakes his head. "I might be too tired to be around people. Clearly I need to go and fix that," he offers in weak explanation, pushing to his feet and beginning to move towards the door. "Oh, /if/ I did it, they'd be hard-pressed to pin it on me," he says, lifting a hand and waving it at the city in general. "I'm like a cyber ninja in there. Leave no footprints, and all of that." He pauses at the door, looking back at the other man. "It was good talking to you, man." "Leave no footprints," Dusk murmurs, half to himself. One wing shifts, bending a thumb-clawed tip towards Doug in some approximation of a wave. "Six hours in three days is noooot frakking enough, dude," he agrees. "You should rest. See ya round, Doug." "Yeah," Doug agrees, his voice already dull with exhaustion in the face of his pending sleep. "I got in the zone for a while." He pulls open the door with a creak, and lifts a hand. "See you around, Dusk. Be safe, yeah?" The smile he offers is weak and limp-looking before he turns and disappears through the door, leaving Dusk to stretch his wings in the quiet once more.