ArchivedLogs:Starting Over

Starting Over
Dramatis Personae Doug, Jackson	2013-04-08 '
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. Even early it's sunny and warm, though the breeze lowers the temperature a bit this high up. Still, it's definitely well into spring, and even Jax with his Southern sensibilities has shed his jacket, outside. The silvery light jacket is draped over the seat of one of the folding chairs, and Jax himself is in short sleeves (a bright yellow t-shirt with the Little Miss Sunshine cartoon character on it) and capris, black denim that leaves most of the half-sleeve tattoos on his legs visible. (One leg has the ten original Care Bears cavorting among rainbows and puffy clours; the other has a panoply of illustrations from /The Lorax/.) His shoes have been discarded, too, left aside beneath the same chair. He's on hands and knees working the soil, turning it over to loosen it. Beside him outside the confines of the garden bed there are a pile of bamboo poles haphazardly stacked beside a coil of twine. The door leading to the interior swings open, then, and Doug steps out onto the roof, blinking at the sunlight. Dressed in blue compression shorts and a pair of flip-flops, the blonde has a towel over his shoulder and his iPhone in his hand, connected to his head by a pair of earbuds, and a bottle of water in the other. He might not see Jackson as he heads towards the folding chairs. The jacket and shoes get a long look before the blonde cants his head to take in the industry. "Nice weather for it," he says dispassionately, latching on to the unoccupied chair and dragging it a few feet away. "Good and sunny." Jackson glances up, his one eye squinting up against the sun as he looks towards Doug. The smile that touches his lips is bright and warm, reflexively. His, "Hi, Doug!" is warm, too, if not quite as exuberant as his usual. He shakes electric-blue hair back from his forehead, and studies the teenager for a moment before turning back to his dirt. His smile skews a little slanted, and there's a quiet-wry amusement buried in his tone. "We got a talkin'-bout-the-weather kinda acquaintance, now?" Doug busies himself with the towel, draping it over the back of the chair. "Don't know," he says as he seats himself, turning his head to gaze at Jackson thoughtfully. "Should it be more than that?" He lifts his eyebrows. "I've sort of been under the impression that we aren't exactly friends. According to others." He lifts a shoulder, and leans back in his chair, closing his eyes as he continues. "I mean, we're not /enemies/ or anything. I don't hate you or whatever." He cracks one eye open, swiveling it Jax-wards. "But 'friend' seems to be kind of a stretch, these days." 'Others' earns a lift of eyebrows, but no further comment. Jackson considers this a while, quiet save for the soft patter of dirt against dirt. He has a small container ner him, seeds, perhaps; he is poking holes in the dirt at intervals with his finger and dropping tiny greenthings inside. "Seems kinda a stretch," he acknowledges at length, shrugging one shoulder, "but it didn't hardly hafta be. Does kinda seem like most times I run into you lately just ends in drama, though, an' I ain't no ways wanting to intrude in someone's life if I'm only gonna be stressing 'em out by being there." "Living in this building is drama," is a sotto murmur, although there's no indication on the teenager's face that he's the one that spoke. "It's hard to be friends with people that make you feel like you're being held at arms' length," Doug says, closing his eye again and grimacing into the warmth of the sun. "Every time I've thought I was being a friend, I've felt kind of dumb about it afterwards. Like I've been forcing myself into your life." His shoulders lift. "Which is probably just me being a mopey teenager, but it's the way I feel." "Living in this building ain't been drama for me," Jackson says, amused, "'least not around nobody else." With two people on the roof it is not all that hard to discern who is speaking. Unless it is Jax's seeds. He /is/ eying them with a lot of thought as he drops them into their small holes. "S'also kinda hard to be friends with people who kinda feel like they're throwin' a tantrum if you /don't/ just immediately let them into every part'a your life, you know," he says, quiet. "M'sorry if you been feeling -- hurt but -- you know, relationships kinda take time? I ain't barely known you a couple months. It'd have been nice to /get/ to know you, but." He pats dirt in over his seed-holes, pushing it gently to close each up and then lightly pat it down into place. "It ain't like an on-off switch, boom, friends, now here's my entire life on a platter." "I don't throw tantrums," Doug says, in a tone that cools the roof a couple of degrees. "I'm not happy about some things, right now, but you have yet to see me throw an out-and-out tantrum. And none of /that/ has been anything other than shit dealing with Micah, so let's be clear on that." He opens his eyes, staring at Jax for a long moment. "I'm not even talking about having access to every part of your life," he says. "I don't expect that would ever be the case. I'm talking about..." he lifts a hand, and scrubs at his face. "I don't know what I'm talking about. Shane says we aren't friends because I don't know anything about any of you, and you say that we can be friends, but I can't expect to know much about you too soon." He exhales heavily, and lifts his eyebrows, unable to reconcile those two seemingly different schools of thought. "Tantrums look different in teenagers than seven-year-olds," Jackson says with a wrinkle of his nose at Doug's sudden chill, a glance over towards the teenager that says: case in point. He finishes patting at the dirt and stands, scooping up three of the bamboo poles and tucking the roll of twine under an arm. He sticks the poles in the soil, starting to lash them together into a tripod. "Shane," he says, with a distinct note of exasperation in his voice, "is /definitely/ a teenager. I'd take anything he ever says with basically a bucket'a salt." He winds the twine, over and under and around, wiggling at the poles slightly to test their sturdiness and then poking them deeper into the earth. "-- though I ain't sure in this case how both those things can't be true. We /could/ be friends. But you storm off in a huff if you /don't/ get everything you want right away. Makes it hard to actually, y'know, /be/ friends. Y'don't get to be a part of someone's life by /barging/ in and then stormin' off all icy-sulky if you don't get your way." "He made a good point, though," Doug says, his mouth tightening a bit as his behavior is subtly pointed out. "I /don't/ really know -any- of you. You're just my neighbors." He lifts his eyebrows, perhaps in exasperation as he casts his eyes at the sky. "Again. All of that storming off was about /Micah/. It's a stupid crush that I'm having a bit of trouble getting over." He grimaces. "That's not true. That last one was about...a lot of things, none of which had anything to do with me getting my way." He lowers his eyes to watch the tripod-building. "I'm sorry if it's felt like I've been barging in," he says quietly, after a moment. "I haven't meant to." "M'sorry 'bout things with Micah and -- everything else, I guess." Jackson is tapping again at each leg of the tripod, lashing it a bit tighter before taking a pair of shears out of his pocket and snipping the twine. He ties it carefully to itself before moving over and clamining new bamboo rods to repeat the process. "We're jus' neighbors now," he agrees, after a pause. "But that's a good place for friendships to start." He is balancing on the wooden rim of the boxed-in garden, toes curled down to keep his balance as he teeter-rocks absently on it. "Y'want to maybe try startin' over from the top? Past months've been a whole lotta chaos that probably ain't helped none with any of this. Spring now, though. Good time for fresh starts." "It's not your fault," Doug says, his mouth tightening. "So please don't apologize for it. It is what it is." He lifts a hand, and rocks it. "I mean, it'd be -- /would have been/ -- nice, but he's got a /policy/ or something about teenagers.' His eyes are closed, but there's a movement under the lids that suggests this idea earns a roll of them. "So, I'm just going to have to learn to live with it." At the quiet agreement, there's a small twitch of his eyebrows, and then his eyes slide open. "A fresh start would be good," he says, exhaling a bit. Jackson's nose wrinkles, head dipping for a moment. "Be nice if more people had that policy," he mutters to his poles, and then, sheepish-apologetic: "Not -- not, I guess, for you, but as a -- parent --" More nosewrinkling. "-- or as a teenager not long ago m'self." That's quieter, more thoughtful. He wiggles the poles further into the ground. "Hi," he says, brighter and more cheerful. "M'Jax. I live downstairs. D'you like peas?" Doug pinkens at the mutter, and there's a flicker of something across his face before he schools it into something more cheerful. "I'm Doug," he says. "I'm on five. And...not sweet peas," he amends apologetically. "I like snow peas, like in stir-fry and stuff, but I've never liked green peas." He smiles. "Tomatoes, though...I can eat those all day long." He closes his eyes, settling back in his chair. "My favorite sandwich in the world is just tomatoes and salt and pepper." He smacks his lips, and opens his eyes again. "You putting any of those in?" he asks, hopefully. "I'll totally spring for them." "These're snow," Jackson says, tapping the tripods he is building. "They need earlyish plantin'. I'm kinda late already actually 'cept things been so hectic --" He starts to twine the second tripod together, quick and tight. "S'gonna be /plenty/'a tomatoes but they won't be up till summer. Still, be great come barbecue time. Roast some on a grill with the sweet peppers, it'll be excellent. You ever done no gardening?" "Really?" Doug leans forward, eyeing the pots. "I don't think I've ever seen them in seed form," he says, his mouth pulling down at the corners thoughtfully. "At least, not that wasn't in a takeout order." He flashes a sympathetic grin. "I imagine the late winter didn't help, either," he says with a nod. "I mean, it's hard to coax something to grow in a foot of snow." He grins, and shakes his head at the question, reaching down to snag his water bottle. "I never have," he admits. "I've had plants and stuff, in my room, but the lawn and garden was handled by a guy, and Mom's vegetable garden is her territory, and forbidden." He lifts a shoulder. "It seems pretty cool, though. Growing stuff you can actually eat." "If you've eaten 'em? Sure you have," Jackson says, with a wider grin; he picks up the small container, rattling it out to Doug; there's a few peas still left inside. Looking kind of small and dry and -- pealike. "I mean, the stuff you eat is the stuff you plant." He sets the container back down, nodding. "Yeah, growin' things when the grounds just froze solid'd be a nice trick. Snow peas get planted right /after/ the frost, though. Guess why they're -- snow." He shrugs, and gives Doug a slightly puzzled look. "-- handled by a guy?" "That makes sense," Doug says of the naming of peas. "I mean, there's not any other reason that's immediately obvious, so that's as good a reason as any." He grins, and slides to the edge of his chair, uncapping the bottle and tipping it to his lips. The question gets a wrinkle of his nose. "A landscaping guy?" He offers, with a furrow of his brow. "He came out and mowed the lawn, and made the flower beds pretty. He has a truck." Like this is pertinent identifying information. "I think he also dug up the area where Mom has her vegetable garden, but she does the gardening." He shrugs, and re-caps the bottle, setting it on the roof beside his chair. "It's mostly for show, though. Something that she can tell people she does at parties." He flutters his fingers. "'Oh, /you/ have a vegetable garden, Mrs. Trump? Why, so do I, darling! We /must/ get together and discuss them.'" It's a weird falsetto that ends in a gagging noise as Doug grimaces. "It's kind of gross." "Oh -- a guy to -- take care of your --" Jackson turns this over slowly, apparently a little puzzled by the concept. "Huh. Cool," he says, uncertainly. He cuts his second piece of twine, tying it off like the first. "Do you and your mom not get along?" he asks, with a slight frown, a slight note of sympathy in his tone. "I love my mother," Doug says earnestly. "She's a wonderful woman, when she's at home. But when we're not at home, I hate the person she thinks she has to be." He wrinkles his nose, and eases back into his seat. "I get that most of the people in her circles /are/ like that, but it's still gross to watch." He quirks a grin. "I mean, she bakes cookies for me when I go home, and they're delicious. But at those parties, and in those restaurants, you'd think we had a world-class gourmet chef attending to our every need." He lifts a shoulder. "We have a landscaping guy, and a woman who comes in twice a week to clean and do laundry. That's it." He frowns, then, furrowing his brow. "I'm not meaning to brag, or anything. I just...it's not as fancy as she makes us out to be." Jackson considers this a moment, dusting his hands off over the vegetable bed with a shower of dirt pattering downward. "Ain't nothin' wrong with fancy," he says, after a moment of thought, "an' I don't know as there's nothing wrong with trying to fit in, neither. If her work's doing all these fancy-type fundraisers for fancy-type people, probably takes some bit'a careful to come off as belonging in all that sorta society, yeah?" He shrugs, slipping the shears back into his pocket. Doug purses his lips as he thinks that over. "I guess," he says, wrinkling his nose. "I guess it's just harder for me to stomach, because I know she's /not/ that kind of person." He lifts a shoulder, and glances at his phone when it buzzes. "Oh, speak of the devil," he says, turning the phone so Jax can see the picture of the blonde-haired woman smiling warmly at the camera. "I'd better take this," he says, standing up. "I've been kind of out of pocket, phone-wise, all weekend." He offers a small grin, and holds up a finger as he slides a finger over the screen. "Yeah, Mom, can you hold on a second? I'm talking to someone." Then he smiles at Jax again, plucking up his towel. "You can use my water for the plants," he offers helpfully, and shifts his weight. "I'll see you around, okay? I've really got to take this." He pauses, chewing his lip lightly. "I'm glad we got things settled," is an earnest sentiment, and then he's grimacing, putting a finger against his left earbud as he spins towards the door. "No, Mom, we /don't/ have that settled. I told you I'm not going to that thing. People are just going to have to start getting used to the idea that --" his conversation is cut off by the door closing behind him, leaving Jackson in the relative tranquility of the rooftop garden.