ArchivedLogs:Unbroken Ground

Unbroken Ground
Dramatis Personae Hive, Jim
In Absentia	2014-03-12 (Part of perfectus TP.)
Location <NYC> Harbor Commons - Courtyard - Lower East Side
With continuing pleasant-/enough/ weather, there's less need for an abundance of layers while Out and About in the city. Hive is accordingly dressed down, jeans, heavy workboots, battered old canvas jacket worn open over top a denim long-sleeved shirt (also open) over a plain white tee. He still wears a hat, soft and fleecy pulled down about his ears, blue with a peppering of red stars spangled over it. He's slow as he gets out of the cab that brings him up to the curb outside the large fenced-in block, slow still in his kind of trudging-shuffling slouch towards the gate. In his hand a key rattles on a chain, fingers curling and uncurling around it; his other hand is shaky as it reaches for the padlock to the gate, just clenching the cold metal tight in his fingers. His head tilts before he puts the key in it, listening. Maybe to the rush of the river beyond. Maybe to something else. Maybe it's the flat slap of shoes worn down to cardboard on the bottom, Jim making with that sullen jogging New York pedestrians are familiar with to cross the street. One cab gets a 'WATCH IT' slap on the hood, and a window is rolled down for a woman to better let her opinions be known about jay-walking assholes. The warm weather does make for deep puddles, and Jim just WADES on through the one blocking off the far curb. It drags up a primordial leaf-rustling brain response of << cool;wet;good;roots >>. It's a serene backdrop to Jim's MENTAL FIRE and desire for a crowbar. "Y'know I stop by here," he says, behind Hive. Looking up at the fencing, "every couple days." One palm opens at his side, without looking - as though he just expects Hive to GIVE him his keys. Maybe he's lazy-mugging him. Wallet next. Hive doesn't look up, just extends a hand to let the chain drop from bony fingers. The key lands in Jim's palm, chain pooling down against rough skin as Hive lowers it into the other man's hand. His other hand stays holding the padlock, thumb brushing across the keyhole. He drops the lock a moment later, lifting his hand to just curl it into the wiring of the fence, leaning up against it. "Yeah." There's a faint smile that flicks across his face, vanishing soon after. His eyes slip closed, forehead thumping up against the fence. "Me too." Key clicking in the lock, Jim hangs a hand off the linking and pushes it open for the both of them to skulk inside. He has an elbow stuck out slightly on the side Hive walks on, running eyes with a hidden hungry imagination over the land beyond. And what might be installed here some day. Some more dire thoughts about whether Hive will be around to see it to completion. "Y'know, if anyone catches wind about what's going up, you're gonna needa post security." << Plant a tree. Save the Habitat. >> Hive's lips twitch as he drags himself up away from the fence, exhausted enough today, it seems, that he doesn't even pretend /not/ to be using Jim as crutch; his fingers curl tight around the older man's elbow, unsteady weight leaning up against Jim's side as he continues on into the grounds. "On paper right now it just looks like any other housing project. Hope to keep it that way a good fucking while. Kept Jax and Micah and Dusk's names /way/ the fuck away from it, at least. Mine's going to be harder to scrub off the project, but outside of doing the Clinic I don't --" His head shakes, eyes skimming over the grounds. "Don't think -- my name comes with --" Here he just trails off, eyes turning out towards the river. "Dusk had a dream the other night --" His fingers clench harder against Jim's elbow. There's a heavy push of mental pressure up against the other man's mind, psionic fingers curling in tight; it comes with a trickle-image of completed work. A spacious-open apartment furnished inside in kind of industrial-minimalist style. Huge table for gaming. Large windows looking out at the dark nighttime river glinting beyond. "This place all done." Though there's a tight distance to his voice, his eyes drooping slowly more closed. The smile pulls at his lips again. "Friday, man. S'gonna start for fucking real." Though arm in arm, it's not a terribly romantic stroll; Jim, all bowlegged and scar-faced, is good for a hobbling-shuffle gait, matching his with Hive's so the both of them can progress like a pair of zombies that got their wrist watches caught on one another post-mortem. The sense of bracing up to support Hive's weight is equal in mind, weathered-solid and firm. Even if the closer mental proximity makes it easier to hear his mind seizing on and chewing up the images shared with him. << - the size of that table; fuck, Dusk, one hell of a vivid... >> Uneasy. Guiltily hopeful. Soaking in every drop of detail like parched earth under drops of rain. He stops a ways into the lot, looking down. Breaking ground in-miniature, in the loose semi-mud, with the toe of his shoe, "...pffhhh. Almost makes you wanna drag everyone out of their homes and bring 'em down here to /watch/." "Was really fucking vivid." Hive says this with the same distance to his voice. The mental imagery continues through a dimly lit house, lights off save for the moonlight slicing silvery in through the huge windows. Over the sofas, the gleaming (spotless, none of Geekhaus's typical mess of dishes and leftovers and game-parts and school-notes) kitchen, the bright light from the fridge and its polished-clean shelves holding only blood. An echoed-memory of hollow-empty-/ache/. Fingers against door. Wing brushing against wood. "Had my fucking layout memorized down to a goddamn /T/. I mean, we all worked together on what we want our home like but some of those /details/ I swear he's never even --" He shakes his head, sagging in further at Jim's side. His eyes close, and open again slowly. "Could do. Could make it a fucking /party/. Pop some gorram champagne. I'll even -- fff. Buy." << - fuck, gloomy bastard, can't even dream about a /dream/ home without - >> Except this is more what Jim is /making/ himself think. To avoid thinking about other things; about stars and jungle cities and a plate of fresh fish. A photograph with a face that changes. The attempt is an entire failure. "Hhaah. What, like - have a little dose of /reality/, fuckers. Let's do it. - but fuck you, paying. You don't have any god damn money." Because even a celebration party for good news from Jim is apparently antagonistically slanted. Hive's weight leaning increasingly against him goes from leaning on his further elbow, to Jim shifting his arms to have one around Hive's back, further arm crossing in to clasp a forearm under Hive's elbow. "Let's siddown. I got some y'wanna see, too." << fun never ends. >> "No, that's the problem," Hive says with an unhappy grimace. "Dusk's the /least/ gloomy gorram -- this was strange as shit his dreams are usually fucking. /Alive/. I must just be that -- but then it's not like /Flicker/ is --" His teeth grind together, and he slouches in further to take a seat on a cinderblock, old and cracking where it sits in the ground. "/You/ gonna pay then? Goddamn hobo. I'll get Dusk to -- bring some. Sparkling -- cider. Shit. Something that'll /fizz/." He shivers where he sits, though it's not, really, cold; his eyes track back towards the center of the grounds where there /had/ been a number of abandoned rowhomes standing before they were cleared away. There are still a few scraps of rubble littering the area. "What do you have for me?" "Hey. I can /get/ money. Could always -- fucking rob someone," even Jim isn't sure whether he's joking. He's angry enough to be thinking about how he'd do it, anyway. Sitting down alongside Hive, where a shoulder could keep the telepath propped without hassle, his posture at least is utterly careless. Feet splayed out, looking out at the water, he withdraws a battered pack of cigarettes. And a corner store street map of the Bronx (Harlem is on the back). And begins unfolding it, "So that gargoyle-lady, Isra," << the one outta his league >> << the hell'm I thinking, out of all our leagues >>, "she caught up with me a while back. We've been lookin' around." "/Or/," Hive suggests with a snort, "you could go back to fucking work. They pay you for that shit, you know. And your office isn't just going to sit there forever." << Your /life/ isn't just going to sit there forever, >> comes in tighter (sledgehammer-thudding) cranky (Totally Not Worried) thump afterwards. He holds out a shaking hand -- not for the map, first, for the /cigarettes/. His fingers curl inward in beckoning. His teeth grit in slow-grind as the Bronx map unfolds. "-- You found anything?" "Or you could bite me," Jim fits one cigarette into the side of his mouth, lights it off a cheap Bic lighter and then pulls it out of his mouth and hands it over to Hive through the smoke exhaled. Eyes directed down /on/ the cigarette, "I never asked you t'give up that fucking office space. If you need it back, s'yours." All roiled with a sullen anger/guilt, the mental addition is harder to shrug off. It snags up in deep earthen root systems like a swallowed fishhook. << asshole, /what/ life. >> With the map unfolded, there are few territories in the bronze bordered off with three different colors of highlighter pens - yellow, pink and green - all roughly intersecting over a specific narrow region of territory. "-we got it worked out, off angle'n perspective. She took a few air trips to confirm it but s'been narrowed to to about here." And, the most important caveat, "We think." "Or you could man the fuck up and pick yourself up out of the," Hive takes the cigarette to stick it between his lips, taking a long /blissful/ drag, "-- gutter, it's a shitty place to live forever." << The one you'd /have/ if you bothered to take /care/ of it, >> comes the mental addition, prickly-testily; beneath these words there is something hard and clenched curling in onto itself that doesn't quite manage to /find/ voice, yet. Instead of words it just digs in harder, mental fingers clenching (fisting) angry-tight in around the deep roots of Jim's mind. He takes another long drag and pulls the cigarette back from his lips. Maybe to pass it back, but between the jittery-shaking of his unsteady fingers and his attention being pulled back down to the map it ends up just kind of -- hanging there, between his first two calloused fingers, halfway held out to Jim and halfway just wobbling in his tenuous grip. "Fuck's even around there, I never go to the gorram Bronx." His teeth clench, narrowed eyes fixed downwards before he adds: "I could still. Come. Listen. Make sure." "Oh, hey, yeah. I hadn't /thought/ of that, hero, thanks," Jim reaches over, yanks back the cigarette, pulls a hard drag off it, "I'll get /right/ on that." The tightening in on the packed-earth and roots of his mind creaks like a ship hull in a storm, turning to it, lurching at/SHOVING/into with one gnarly hand curling into a packed fist. Where faint hairline cracks split, are smells of stale coffee and cigarettes, rows of chairs in a bleak basement below a landuromat, listening to a woman talk about cheating on her husband from a seat near the back-- << the fuck is this coming from now, got other shit >> "That's the thing - it's not exactly abandoned houses and convenient warehosues. It's fucking.. campus nearby. Some rowhouses - Jehovah's fucking Witness Kingdom Hall. -- We got it down to a basement window." He isn't, this time, flat-out fighting against Hive coming along to listen. << basement means he'd be in range from the street; wouldn't have to leapfrog through brains... >> But it's not something he's eager to jump on. Not by a long-shot. And the unease remains thick. "We /all/ have other shit, man. Sooner or later you're going to have to deal with yours." Inside Hive that clenched-up knot coils tighter, bleak-black-angry against the hard-packed earth. He pushes himself back to his feet, shaky-unsteady; he shoves hands into the pockets of his jacket, turning bony shoulders in towards the river at the far-distant side of the lot. His toe digs against the ground, scraping against loose soil and mud. Unearthing a rock to kick it -- kick /at/ it, at least, though his toe misses its mark. "Campus, jegus, please tell me he isn't some undergrad's fucking experiment." "Thanks for the new flash, Oprah, who says I'm not," Jim remains seated when Hive stands up, tucking cigarette back into his mouth, one eye squinching up and a throb in the side of his temple against the powerful bite of mind against his, "Maybe I like the gutter." There's a sense of stomach churning; sickness/frustration like something hunted and - tired. Hollow. And digging in to push back /harder/ against loosing inches. "Mnghh maybe the Jay-Dubs are bringin' about the end of days. I don't fucking know, but if get him back and find out this was all about soul-saving I'm personally burning down the next fucking church I come across." "You're fucking not and you haven't been for the better part of a goddamn year," Hive snaps back irritably, back turned to Jim and shoulders hunching up tight. The sick-angry knot in him clenches tighter before unraveling all at once in a sudden /exploding/-force burst: << -- and I might not always /be/ here to watch your fucking back. You need to start goddamn watching it /yourself/ or -- >> This cuts off sharply, Hive's teeth clenching and a sharp breath hissed out between his teeth, a little ragged-gasping at its end. The knot clenches back in tight-coiled grip, angry-fierce around Jim's pushing. "You just -- can't --" His head bows, hand lifting from his pocket to scrub knuckles across his face. He shoves his hand back into his pocket, kicking again at the stone. Missing again. "Yeah," he mutters, "I'll be right fucking there with you. So when are we going?" A final ominous creak, some hateful inner /satisfaction/ in going down fighting for nothing at all, and Jim's defenses crumple into shards of breaking wood. Or a heart. Watching Hive's hand move to his unseen face. He throws his cigarette aside, a given up project and exhales hard, "...I dunno what I'm doing Hivey." He lifts a hand, drops it, while the other raises to... pinch around the front of his nose. Then raise higher, to grind into an eye socket with knuckles to one side, thumb to the other. "'m going t'meetings. Every fucking time, screwing up. Going back. Rinse and repeat and I just." << don't care. >> Somewhere in the midsts, misplaced humor recalls a different time, so long ago - a trip into the sewers on a fucking whim - "You wanna go now?" Hive's shoulders stay clenched in tight, but little by little the hard knot inside him is loosening, coiling snug instead of /clenching/ painful-hard, weaving mental tendril-fingers in and around those shards to gather them all back inward. "You go through enough shit," he answers, staring outward at the river rather than at Jim, "sometimes a bit of not-fucking-caring-anymore keeps you together. Doesn't -- fff. Last though. And you know the fuck of it is however much you don't care you have a crapton of people around who care /for/ you. I just -- don't fucking know if after I'm -- if you'll goddamn /let/ them." A third and final strike at the stone and apparently Hive has declared /himself/ Out, glaring down at the rock angrily. He turns around slowly, raccoon-eyes rimmed slightly red among their shadows. "Now?" He hisses out a sharp breath of laughter, looking down at his sneakers, stance wobbling unsteadily on the damp ground. "Sure. Fuck. Let's go." "/Let/ them? Fuck you. What d'you want me to do, grab a bowl, head down to the park and get in line at fucking -- Food Not Bombs? In case you didn't know, we're on a shits deficit right, no one's got a lot t'spare these days. Not everyone's-" Like some BONE caught in his mental teeth, Jim's thinking of a -- place; it's warm and there is eye contact and touch and familiarity - of Flicker and Micah and Jax for all their eclectic differences in style and color and demeanor, packed in around Hive on his stupid battered couch--. SHORT muffled laugh-bark sound, "-a natural fucking family man." He isn't immediately moving to stand, elbows propped up and leaning forward with hands rubbing deep into his eyes, taking in slow breaths, letting them out. Morbidly allowing these unsavory clumps of loathing to be pulled back together with a guilty thought that he should be fighting it. But for a moment, -- he doesn't. He feels sick and he lets it bind together, lets it be (<< -one last- >>) a breath of relief. And as soon as its together, stable and hard again, it turns on Hive, gruff, quiet, << ...y'know you can't stay, man. >> And with a noisy SNIFF, he stands as well, beating at a wrinkle on his sleeve, "Good. Sooner we find this kid, the sooner we can start blowing holes in people. Burning houses down." "Who the fuck's talking about /charity/, asshole, I'm talking about /people giving a fuck about you/. And they goddamn /do/, you know. Though," Hive adds this with a wryer note, chuffing out a quick snort, "-- you turn up on Jax's doorstep any day he's sure as fuck not going to send you away empty-handed. That's not /pity/, it's goddamn family. That you /have/ whether you're a natural at it or not." His mind doesn't release, even after it's done packing pieces back in. It stubbornly coils further, tendril-threads spreading out to start rooting deep into earth. "... the blowing holes part I'll. Probably have to bow out of. I think you need people who can fucking -- stand up. On their own. For that." Flat-footed and turned out towards the water, Jim matches Hive for dry, red eyes - fucking air off the river. Some shit. The two of them standing there on unbroken ground, breathing under the sun, puts in him some premonitional chill. And, guiltsick or not, he shifts open his roots to form a sudden tight /net/ with which to embrace these encroaching tendrils. Like a squeezy-ball. "Fuck," he hisses, "Jax would, wouldn't he." There's so much empty space, between states of mind; yawning unformed potential, not fully thought but structured with a momentum. Uneasy, curious, curse him, yes curious already for what fresh hell they might find, there is a shaky sense of transition, something in Jim is uneasily letting go. Or maybe that's the fucking air, too. << Wait, so, you got like crazy cancer, right? Tell me they're giving you some uber-frosty Grade-A fucking medical marijuana to chase it down. >> So that he can SMOKE it. Since he has Hive's keys, he can take his damn time, hooking for Hive's arm, to sling it across the back of his neck. "Pff, you're standing-/ish/. We can bring a two-by-four, prop your bony ass up." Gritted-quiet-angry-confused: << ...ffffffffthanksshutup. >> Those mental tendrils sink in, /root/ in, spreading wide and deep until they've comfortably dug in to make this ground their /own/; easier here than in most, they're not so much carving new space as /finding/ old familiar paths to slip back into. It comes with a rush of twisting-wrenching pain, some hard throbbing place in Hive's skull now hammering in at Jim's; it comes with a sick-disoriented-nausea, with a sudden discoordinated /weakening/ of limbs, or at least of the connections to them. For a moment the world is too /bright/-harsh, too disjointed to parse properly. And then it settles, and calms, and there's only the river rushing past and the bony-hard weight of Hive's shoulder propping heavily up against Jim's side. And when he speaks again it doesn't come in a slam of weight from outside, just a thought surfacing in Jim's mind as naturally as though it were Jim's own: << S'just kind of how family does. >> His arm curls around Jim, and he settles in for the walk back out. "When I get a fucking wheelchair," he decides, "I'm tricking it the hell /out/, you remember Matt's goddamn lightcycle-chair? I'm gonna have to one-up that. But till then," he jostles at Jim's shoulder with an arm, "/mush/." "Nhaaah," when the sensate nature of his world /shifts/, Jim breathes out sharply, head twisting to the side as though he'd taken a bracing shot of whiskey. He grits and turns into it, the weakness and sharp glare of light dazzling in the water. << -every second. god dammit, he's there, every fucking... >> The /want/ to know, this tiny glimpse into the wide terrible new world this other person now lives. It's taken in, whatever is given, roots shifting to let this other mind weave into all those familiar places (<< -not for long can't do this for long- >> << -with him beside him fuck this is wrong- >>). The flow of them walking in tandem is smoother, sharing brains, and Jim's arm hooked around Hive's back constricted tight. And that word is in him. Bubbled up as though it were his own mind. A single word with so much squirming discomfiture; memories faded with age, of a woman, long hair and big earrings, a man with a beard and a tye-dye shirt, both long dead but still so /young/ to recall-- /Family/. << God dammit, you make my life hard. >> "Mush my grassy /ass/... Christ, there's that /competitive/ thing you fucking do; it's bad enough watching you on game night. That one of those -- /Asian/ things?" And slowly the two of them cross the lot and exit through the gate like lame horses.