ArchivedLogs:Worry

Worry
Dramatis Personae Hive, Isra, Flicker	2013-09-28 '
Location <NYC> 403 {Geekhaus} - Village Lofts - East Village
There's kind of a college-dorm feel to this place, though some of its occupants have left college behind. Entering the apartment finds visitors greeted by the perpetually messy living room, a mismatched assortment of couches and chairs (and milk crates) surrounding the wide table in the center. The wall holds a range of posters; some political, some sporty, some from video games, and a string of white lights strung over the kitchen doorway might be a holdover from Christmas. The kitchen adjacent is just as cluttered, its table unfit for eating due to its perpetual covering of books, papers, cereal boxes, projects; the fridge is usually sparsely populated. Ketchup. Beer. Not a lot of food. There are two bedrooms here, split between the four people; the fold-out couch in the living room (often folded out!) suggests that at least one of them does not actually claim a room as their own. Geekhaus is fairly quiet, Saturday evening. Flicker is in his bedroom studying, and Dusk has just returned to napping -- sleeping has been /difficult/ for him since his injury, pain combined with a splinted arm and wing that make it hard to find good positions to lie in. But with the help of some painkillers he has finally managed; Hive is, therefore, taking some pains to be more quiet as he leaves his (almost muted) game of Red Dead Redemption in favor of the kitchen, instead. To glare irritably at the almost bare contents of his fridge. Isra gives only a light, cursory knock before walking in, Cornell University tote slung over one shoulder and a mug in her hand. She is draped in a seafoam green himation of ancient Greek design, a hunter green rope belt securing the garment as well as two simple fabric pouches. Pausing just inside the door, she scans the apartment with weary eyes. There is unwonted sluggishness in her movements and a sharp edge of concern to her thoughts. "Good evening, Hive. I hope it is not too presumptuous, but I have brought food." "Oh thank fucking god." Hive closes the fridge quickly, emerging from the kitchen and vaulting over a milkcrate towards the door to lean in and plant a KISS on Isra's forehead. "We were just gonna starve. I was going to feed Dusk sri racha for dinner. You look like shit, tell me you've been sleeping more than he has." Startled into motionlessness, Isra stares at Hive for the space of a few seconds before venturing a tired smile. "Had I known you were in such dire straits, I would have brought groceries, as well." That concern has blossomed into something fierce and painful, but her expression does not change. "Is he sleeping now, at least?" She brings her tote to the dining table and starts unloading plastic takeaway boxes redolent with zatar, garlic, and chilies. "Mezze, from a second cousin of mine. He runs a catering service in Queens..." Even she knows she is babbling, and masters herself with practiced ease. Turning to Hive, she shakes her head. "I have not slept /much./" Hive shakes his head, crouching down by the table to SNIFF at the food. His stomach rumbles, quietly. "This smells fucking delicious, thank you. Uh --" He flicks a glance over towards Dusk's mostly-closed bedroom door. "For now. It won't last. Hasn't been lasting. Takes him a couple hours and then he's up again in an hour." His jaw tightens faintly with this. "Do you need his painkillers, too? Think they might help numb more than just bullet-holes, you feel like you could take your mind off shit for a while, too." His eyes shift up towards her, lips thinning. "-- How bad was it? I mean, at the church?" Isra's hand stops as she is in the act of pulling out a large, flat container. Disks of manakeesh are visible through the lid, fogged as it is with condensation. "It was awful." The panicked shouting, gunshots, flash bangs, smoke, and fire play out in her memories as muted and distant--as though she had experienced them through a particularly discordant film. Even the image of Dusk's hands, pressing bloody gauze into Micah's wounds, feels disconnected somehow. "I am fine. We got everyone out, and the injured will recover." Hive's eyes close, at the images from Isra. He sinks down to sit on the floor, leaning back heavily against the base of the couch. "Yeah." His voice is a little gruff. "They'll recover." His knuckles scrub against his eyes. "They'll keep fucking coming, though. I mean, all those people, what the fuck chance do they have now?" Setting out the last container, Isra hangs the empty canvas tote from the back of a chair before sitting down in it sidewise. She stretches out one wing and curls it around Hive, the motion hesitant and inevitably calling Dusk to mind--she having, after all, learned it from him--with both tenderness and pain. "There will be other sanctuarie. Not so dramatic nor so public, perhaps, but as with every chapter of state-sponsored persecution, there will be an underground railroad. We are still finding our feet." << And when we rise, the world will change. >> That thought speaks with Isra's new voice, layered and ominous. Hive settles back into the curl of wing, coiled tension in his shoulders relaxing as he shifts into its touch. "Less public and dramatic might mean it lasts a bit fucking longer." His knuckles grind in harder against his eye. "Oh, I think the world's changing already. We just gotta make sure it changes in the right direction." His eyes slip towards Dusk's bedroom door, something pained tightening his jaw. "It's gonna take a fucking hell of a push." "Yes. There is a lot of anger out there." Isra's own fury is suddenly at the forefront, yet it feels like it belongs to someone else. "There are plenty of recriminations to throw around, but there is also good will and compassion. We will make it, somehow." She squeezes Hive gently, her wing not nearly so fuzzy as Dusk's, but warm and strong all the same. "If it needs a good push, we have many hands." She pauses a beat and quirks one smooth eyebrow ridge. "Some more than others." "This year's been long on fucking blood and short on compassion." Hive stays leaning up into the warm embrace of Isra's wing. "S'true, though. And with ever stunt like goddamn Harlem that they pull, there's /more/ hands pushing back against this bullshit." His lips twitch at the last words. "Hands, wings, tentacles. If this battle's going to be won on /limbs/ per capita we're definitely coming out way ahead. I think Taylor skews things single -- /hah/ -- handedly." "There you go." Isra smiles, a brief flash of fangs. "We are not too short on hearts and minds, either." The clinic, seen through her eyes as they brought in the wounded; the clean halls they traversed and the empty waiting room where she paced. She offers him a hand up, talons long but meticulously groomed. "Now, you should eat--Flicker, too, if he is here. The baba ganoush is excellent." "Eat Flicker, what the fuck -- oh, right, shit." Hive tips his head back to grin up at Isra. "There was a break there, wasn't there." His eyes flit over to his closed bedroom door as he takes Isra's hand to pull himself to his feet. It takes a moment before Flicker arrives, emerging with a brightly hopeful look in his brilliantly green eyes. "Baba ganoush? Oh man no wonder Dusk loves you." "This motherfucker," Hive informs Isra, "is doing for heart what Taylor does for limbs." "I am not certain he knows about my admittedly spectacular taste in baba ganoush." Isra rises and starts opening containers. She broadcasts a rather specific feeling of weightlessness, of falling--or flight. The scent of Lebanese food blooms and fills the room. "But love leads us down unexpected paths sometimes and rewards us in unexpected ways." Her other wing curls around Flicker's shoulder and herds him over to the table. "I take your figurative point, Hive, but the literal mental image is?" She looks down at Flicker, to whose person her mind's eye is adding extra hearts. "...curious." "Yeah, s'like a fucking -- octo -- /shit/ cephalopods have all the hearts too don't they?" Hive's eyes widen sharply as he moves to the table. "Are we sure Taylor's not holding out on us, maybe he got all the limbs /and/ all the hearts." "Seems like it's a safer bet to have more than one. I mean, they're pretty fragile." Flicker turns his head, nuzzling sort of reflexively catlike against the wing that is herding him. He heads over to the table, too, plopping down into a seat beside Hive. "Oh, wow, Isra, you're great." "Dusk's waking," Hive reports somewhat unhappily. "Should we feed him or hope he sleeps?" "Sleep," Flicker says, dropping his voice lower. "But /I'm/ famished. -- You want a drink?" he adds, to Isra. "Water, juice -- beer?" He sounds uncertain on this last one. "Got a couple. That and condiments is basically all that's in our fridge," Hive admits. "Cephalopods seem a likely candidate for dominion of this planet." Isra strokes her chin. "We had better get our act together." Her ears press back, the ache and concern swelling again. "I might have chosen less fragrant food, if I knew it would tempt him away from much-needed sleep. /Might./" She stalks into the kitchen and examines the refrigerator herself. No part of her shock and dismay makes it onto her face. "I definitely should have brought groceries." She returns with three--all clean, all different colors--in one long-fingered hand, a pitcher of water in the other, and a carton of orange juice tucked under an arm. "Don't think it was you. He's hurting like a motherfucker." Hive shrugs a shoulder. "He needs sleep, though. Might fall asleep again after some more painkillers." One side of his mouth pulls upward, at Isra's dismay, though he doesn't glance back towards the fridge. "Better than it's been some days. At least we /have/ ketchup. We, uh -- get a /lot/ of fucking takeout." Flicker glances between them with a thoughtful flick of glance. "Sri racha, too. We're pretty well-stocked." He reaches up to take a glass. "Thanks!" "You come. Eat." Hive kicks at the legs of a chair beside him, turning it around to face backwards instead, Dusk's preferred method of sitting-in-chairs-with-wings.