Logs:Chag HaAsif

Chag HaAsif
Dramatis Personae Jax, Spencer
In Absentia Ryan, Scott	2024-10-21 "I would totally be an Unnecessarily Complicated Venn Dia-fan."
Location <XS> Sukkah - Grounds
Set up on a small rise in the field, the X-sukkah has a roughly hexagonal footprint, a wooden frame of sturdy interlocking triangles, and two layers of wooden lattice for walls, painted up in an autumnal spectrum of reds, oranges, and purples. The doorway is roughly shaped like a wide "X" and the reed roof lets in ample daylight (or starlight), though there are lanterns suspended from crossed beams overhead, too. At night, the table and chairs fold away to make space for sleeping pads and bags, which have multiplied as the holiday wears on and the sukkah becomes the place to be. For strictly religious reasons, of course. Most of the guests have returned to the actual dorm hall, though a couple more students have suddenly felt called to the particular mitzvah of sleeping over here. Spencer is not sleeping, though he's certainly dressed for bed in soft blue flannel pajamas with a motif of topographical lines in lighter blue. He's sitting on a blanket outside, away from the school buildings, facing the lake and the forest beyond. He has a tablet balanced across his knees, though he's not really looking at the app that's turning the endless restless trace of his fingertips into bursts of color and sparkle that linger and shift as they fade. He's staring off at the lake, brightly silvered with the reflection of the still mostly-full moon. Jax has made his way out to the sukkah, bearing a large carafe of cocoa and a still-warm tray of pumpkin swirl brownies. He does not look Ready For Bed despite his current post chaperoning this increasingly exciting sleepover (perhaps not a religious mitzvah for him, but certainly still a mitvah on behalf of Scott's worry levels), still in the overalls (printed with a vivid venus flytrap-print design), bold purple long-sleeved henley and black-and-rainbow boots he's been wearing all day. He is unfolding one of the chairs so that he can deposit these in a corner of the sukkah for the other kids, though he's poured one cup and put a brownie on a napkin before he makes his way over to Spence, crouching down beside the blanket and offering out the cup of hot chocolate and sweet treat. Spence sets the tablet aside so he can accept the sweets. "Thanks," he says quietly, taking a careful sip of the cocoa before setting that aside too so he can nibble on the brownie. He turns and studies his father with an expression that's difficult to parse, probably because he's trying to conceal anxiety by scrunching his face up. "Did you get a chance to shake?" There's a sort of faintly hopeful note in this question, like he's absolutely prepared to bestow a lulav on those in need. "Huh? Oh --" Jax looks back to the sukkah, his own nose scrunching. "I didn't -- I mean, I probably had plenty chance." His shrug is made a little less pronounced by the fact he is simultaneously wrapping his arms around his shins and squeezing there tight. "I think there been enough people at this party the lulav been well shooken, though." He's glancing to Spence's tablet briefly, then tipping his head upward. "You gonna be sleeping soon?" Spence nods. "Oh, yeah. Yeah, I just. Thought -- if you wanted to. That's all." He picks the cocoa back up, but hunches a little tighter into himself, dropping one hand to trail glimmering many-hued fire across the tablet screen. "Probably not for a little while. It's been hard to sleep. When I'm trying to sleep, anyway. Falling asleep in political science, so easy." He was probably going for something with that smile, but mostly it just comes out looking strained and embarrassed. "You?" "Oh, I been chaperoning kids here long enough I am not doing nothing so foolish as that till y'all out-out. Mr. Summers got enough on his plate without waking up to find I let everybody summon up demons or take a road trip to another dimension or none'a that while I was sleeping." Jax curls his fingers in against his shin, fingertips pressing at the satiny squish of the lightly fleece-lined overalls. "Y'want some melatonin? For now not for poli-sci." Spence snorts his cocoa in an effort not to choke on it at "summon up demons". "Ow ow ow timing!" But there's laughter in this complaint. "I would definitely wake you up if anyone was trying to summon demons." It's not clear whether he's deliberately leaving off what he would do about an extradimensional road trip. "I have some melatonin lying around, somewhere, but it doesn't work." He's still wincing when he sniffles. "Okay maybe it would work better if I actually like. Went to bed after I took it?" His shoulders sag. "I'm sorry. I'm trying to not be so...high support need...y? Wait that's ableist. Um." He waves one hand vaguely in the air and drops it again when he fails to catch whatever word he was fishing for. "I'm eighteen years old." He sounds kind of skeptical of his own claim. "Yeah, I think probably if you take it an' then keep staring at that screen that ain't gonna help so much." Jax tips his chin toward the tablet. His cheek drops to rest on his knees, head turned to the side to look just slightly past Spencer. "You are. S'pretty convenient how the day you turn eighteen all your needs just end like --" His fingers snap. "I personally ain't had a single need in a decade and a half, just ask Ryan." "I wasn't..." Spence looks down at the tablet. His defense is extremely flimsy. "I have 'night mode' on." He rolls his eyes. "I'm not saying adults don't have needs, I just mean. I should learn how to coordinate my own support without dumping it all on you and Ryan or pulling away. Especially right now." "Mmm." Jax nods very seriously at this, his brows furrowed in a picture of intense thought. "We also stopped being your parents on your last birthday so that tracks." He's returned to squishing lightly at the fabric of his pants, finger tracing against the outline of one toothy flower and leaving very faint glowing wisps in its wake. "What does coordinating your own support look like, in your head? Like, I think to a lotta people, family's a first-line kinda option there." Spence ducks his head. "You'll always be my parents, but I don't need you the same way I did when I was five, baruch haShem. Hurray for growing up!" He makes one single jazz hand, in what is presumably intended to be a celebratory fashion. "And it's not like I buy into the...I dunno, societally prescribed timeline for adulting?" Though now he tips his head from side to side. "Okay, I'm kinda doing it about the eighteen thing, just hoping that prescription has a placebo effect so I can feel responsible and mature and like I even slightly know what I'm doing." He chews on his lower lip. "Like knowing what 'coordinating my own support' looks like. Oh! I did start to make a...pod map." He picks the tablet back up. Then turns the screen off and sets it down again. "It's not very exciting it's like an unnecessarily complicated Venn diagram." "You started to make a what?" Jax sounds just baffled, here, though he's sitting up a little and eying Spencer's tablet with a genuine curiosity. "Unnecessarily Complicated Venn Diagram is the name of my new antifascist klezmer band. I got no idea what that even is, though, you gotta show me." He frowns. "Tomorrow. After you actually do some sleep." "I would totally be an Unnecessarily Complicated Venn Dia-fan," Spence assures his father, actually smiling wide and bright and uncomplicated. "Not as snappy as 'Blackbird'. A pod map is like a visual representation of the different ways that you give and receive support in your social circles -- whoa maybe it's a Venn diagram because circles -- I learned about it at one of the radical emotional wellness skillshares. I have so many notes you're gonna love how woo it is." He produces a bottle of melatonin from somewhere and washes down a pill with his cocoa before disappearing the bottle again. "But yeah, tomorrow." Jax's smile is just a little fixed through this explanation, his eye a little wide. He hops lightly to his feet, extending a hand to help Spence up as well. "Tomorrow."