Logs:Dadfree

Dadfree
Dramatis Personae Hive, Polaris
In Absentia	2022-03-17 "God shit's supposed to be weird but the guilt babies are weird extraneously."
Location <PRV> VL 403 {Geekhaus} - East Village
This is a small, two-bedroom apartment, the living room semi-open to the kitchen and dining area, a single bathroom situated between the doors to the bedrooms. The common areas are beautifully appointed with solid, matching handmade wooden furniture in intricate geometric mosaics. The kitchen table is ringed with coordinated but not identical chairs, two of them modular with low scooped backs, designed with winged bodies in mind. The wide, low coffee table fits neatly into the corner of a modular sectional couch, and the immense television is enthroned in an entertainment center that also houses various consoles and video games. The walls are lined with bookshelves laden with comics, roleplaying supplements, board games, speculative fiction, and a grab-bag of technical texts. The walls in between are adorned with some framed posters of classical science fiction and fantasy media along with a few pieces of gorgeous if unusual original art. It's a rare weekday that sees Polaris in a dress, a sweeping emerald velvet affair with bell sleeves, a silver brocade bodice and matching trim, and other pseudo-Renaissance stylings. Her hair hangs down in tumbling green waves, her nails are painted glossy silver-green duochrome and her makeup is subtly smoky. In addition to her usual wire twist and CTR rings, her wrists are circled with intricate woven wire cuffs that match her choker, so seamless as to defy explanation for how she might have gotten them on to begin with. She's sitting sidewise on the couch with her legs crossed beneath the ample skirt of her dress, a dessert plate with a half-eaten slice of black forest cake in one hand and a fork in the other, though she's not eating at this particular moment. "Right, so there I am, hopped up on 600 milligrams of Tylenol and Dr. Charles Motherfrakking Xavier rolls up all like--" She breaks off here, brows furrowing. << Is that ableist? >> Then, shaking it off, she continues. "--all like 'correction, I know your father'. So me and Winona were like 'wat'. Oh and apparently him and mom and freakin' Magneto did...activism? Together?" She waves the fork in a small circle beside her temple, miming scrambling her own brain. "Seriously like, the closest thing I can remember my mom ever doing to 'activism' was lecturing people about abortion with tiny plastic fetuses." Beside Polaris' current glamor, Hive looks even more scrubby in comparison, though he's just normal for him in jeans and a brown tee shirt featuring several hedgehogs staring at another who has upended a can of blue paint over itself. His own slice of cake is entirely untouched on its plate on his knees, though he occasionally makes halfhearted overtures towards cutting off a bite. He's taken the mention fo Xavier and Magneto largely in stride, only a dry: "You should get harder drugs than tylenol to deal with that man." His fork is creeping towards his cake, but stops, lowers, his brows hiking way up. "Sorry, tiny plastic what?" Polaris gives a soft puff of a laugh and almost does not wince, the pain in her ribs dull by now. "I mean it was more bizarre than anything. You'd expect someone like him would just send a servant or something?" The lift of her intonation here is not interrogative or even uncertain, born of her intentional self-distraction--an as-yet crude masking of thoughts. << ...not like he's gonna out anyone whatevs it's good practice... >> "Still would have liked better drugs, though. I seriously think they were punishing me." She blinks at Hive, briefly forgetting her own off-handed mention of fetal models. "Fetuses. Basically like props for guilt-tripping pregnant people. Though they don't even look like fetuses, more just creepy shrunken newborns, like..." The memory she dredges up for Hive is that of a two-inch long plastic infant curled peacefully in the palm of Suzanna Dane's hand and the box from which she had just extracted it--full of rows upon rows of identical models. "I know it's fucked up, but sometimes I forget growing up Catholic was also just really weird." "I thought the God-cannibalism was the height of Weird Catholicism but I think boxes of plastic fetus... fetii?" Hive's face briefly scrunches. "Might take top prize. God shit's supposed to be weird but the guilt babies are weird extraneously." He contemplates his cake again, though this time without any move to eat it. "What did he want? Just to brag that he knew your dad and you don't? Kinduva dick move." "Man I don't even know how to compare the weirdness levels." Polaris picks her fork back up and cuts off another morsel of cake, careful to include some--but not too much--icing. "It just all seemed so normal when I was little. Even after I started hating it." << It really took ancient Jewish submarines to make me think critically about the WTF of it all (it wasn't the book it was Dawson maybe it was the book a little) >> She pauses and looks up from her fastidious cake preparations. "He's not my dad. I mean, neither is Arnold, but at least he was there." It's the thought of Arnold Dane--party hat perched crooked on his head as he sets a candle-laden birthday cake down on the dining table--and not the half-mythical Magneto that makes her eyes sting with tears. She blinks them away, remembering her anger but mostly angry at herself for caring. << Fuck them both and fuck mom for fucking them (why do I even want kids what the fuck is wrong with me) >> She scrubs a sleeve across her eyes. "I dunno, he just seemed kinda...embarrassed? Guilty? If I didn't know better I'd think I was his by-blow that he ignored for 28 years." Her shoulders hunch in tight as she studies the patterns of icing on her plate. "Anyway, he offered to pay my bills, which...well. Hospital equipment is expensive as fuck. I think it'd be a strain even for Ryan but I guess not this guy who can just drop a few hundred thousand dollars on a sentimental whim." "Aright." Hive lifts his hand in a gesture of surrender. "You're embracing the dad-free life. Joining the no-dad club. Unless," his brows raise, "you're about to get adopted by a sketchy billionaire. Couple hundred grand is a lot to drop on, what, the kid of your -- former friend? That's a reach of a story. And yeah, that'd hurt Ryan's wallet, but he's got actual reason to give a shit about you." Polaris subsides and pushes one hand through her hair. "Sorry, I'm just--" << --hating my birthday this year got three whole parents and exactly none of them want me. >> Two of her wire rings detach themselves and coil artfully around her tresses. "Anyway, I'm not about to go Little Orphan Annie." << Oh my God unless he makes me! Shit he said I could ask Hive if my brain's been messed with did you already know about this guy or...? >> "I mean it is sketchy but what the hell could he possibly want with me? Kinda scraping the bottom of the reject orphan bin." She sighs carefully, picking her spoon back up as the steel wires pull her hair back behind her ears. "Ryan's got so much shit going on, but I guess he can decide for himself if it's a problem. Alright alright, I'm gonna stop being pathetic...now." She marks this transition by finally taking another bite of her cake. Hive settles back in his seat, regarding Polaris a little skeptically. "Do you -- think he messed with your brain? What... would he want from you? I'm gonna guess he probably has easier ways to get fake kids than mind controlling grown-ass women." He sets his fork down, curling a leg up underneath himself. "Naaah, wasn't saying you should take Ryan's money and not his, just that Xavier's a whole weirdo. Man's a billionaire. Why wouldn't you take his money. That'd be some television grade Pointless Gesturing. Unless he's making you swear fealty to New York's upper crust you should probably take his free-ass money and Ryan can keep feeding every stray who comes out of Prometheus." He peers sidelong toward Polaris. "You sure? You got a little while before your thing, you could be pathetic for like, another hour at least." Polaris frowns. << Wait do I? >> "I mean...no? Not really." She chews on her lower lip. "But you're right that whole thing was sketch like literally why does he even care at all to say nothing of trying to help...his former friend's bastard. Maybe it is just all incomprehensible rich people logic." She gives a small, tight shrug. "He said I could ask you if I was worried about him messing with my head which...also seems like a sketchy thing to say." << Or maybe it was cuz he could read my mind and knew I was freaked out? >> Her head is starting to hurt and she leans against the back of the couch a little harder. "I dunno, like. I don't wanna be pathetic, it's my birthday and there's a party and I love parties." << "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to..." >> She studies Hive, also kind of sidelong. "Sure you don't wanna come by, even for a little while? I mean it's totally okay if you don't, you already got me cake and I love getting you all to myself but. You know." << Does he know do I know it's totally normal and fine to not wanna do parties >> "There's amazing coffee in it for you." "Maybe they were really close. I mean, if Dawson had..." Hive trails off, this sentence unfinished. He is quiet for a while after this, staring down at his cake. "You want Advil?" is the next response he gives. He's getting up regardless to go fetch a bottle, pouring three pills out for himself. Cautiously, after this: "... who all's coming?" "Hard to imagine a notorious mutant freedom fighter being close to--" Polaris frowns again, thoughtful if uncertain, Rasheed's face surfacing in her mind. "Okay, so genius billionaire scientists being buddies with terrorists isn't that out there." << I would so spoil Wendy's kids if she had any and I'm broke as fuck. >> She draws one deep breath, then another, then looks up, blinking. "Oh gosh yes! Four, please." Her mental review of her guest list is a little vague and haphazard. "Some Blackburners, my house obvs, and other Prometheans." << Not Jamie why do I feel bad about that ugh! >> "Dusk, Matt, DJ...Lily." "Lotta liberals were more radical once. It's not that hard to imagine. Plus, they're both old as balls. I bet there was shit for mutant community in the stone age so you probably got pretty tight with the three other freaks you knew." Hive tips more pills into his palm, returning to the couch to offer four of them to Polaris before he downs his own, dry. "Hn," is mild but intrigued at the first part of Polaris's list; his expression twists at the end like he's just bitten a lemon. "... hnnnh." His shoulders hunch inward, and he scowls at his untouched cake. It takes a moment, but his expression softens, a moment before he grumbles: "Guess I'll change."