Logs:Hands Off

Hands Off
cn: blood/injury
Dramatis Personae Jax, Joshua, Steve
In Absentia	2021-04-18 "I guess you've chopped. A few more limbs than I have?"
Location <PRV> Sam and Steve's Apartment - Harlem
This is a third-story walkup in an aging historic building which, while not entirely crumbling, has a certain worn and shabby look, its plumbing and fixtures often in need of repair. The apartment has two small bedrooms, but makes up for it with capacious common areas. A single long space serves as living room and dining room combined, is semi-open to the kitchen, and has a surprisingly large bathroom with an antique claw-footed tub. Tall, drafty windows let out onto the fire escape from the living room and both bedrooms, and let in excellent light from the southern exposure. The sleek art deco motif that runs through the living room furniture, while not strictly matching, has clearly been worked to coordinate. The dining set, coffee and end tables have been crafted with complementary geometric patterning, ebony accents providing a dark contrast to the warmer swirls of maple burl that feature most prominently. The sofa, love seat, and chair fill out the rest of the living room, a matching set upholstered in plush burgundy. The numerous lamps do not all match, some of them clearly temporary supplement for the inadequate overhead lighting. The day is cloudy but not unpleasantly cold, the weather slowly but steadily warming up to the promise of a late spring. Steve has changed out of his Sunday best and into a plain black t-shirt -- tight over his muscular frame -- and worn, comfortable blue jeans. He's just fetched a pile of dark blue towels from his closet and is now hovering uncertainly in the doorway to his room. "I ah -- don't know how much of a mess..." Trailing off, he doesn't sound as if he has any intention of finishing that sentence. "Maybe better if we do this in my room?" He darts a quick glance toward his liquor cabinet. "Not sure if that would be uncomfortable for Joshua. The man barely knows me." This last is soft, his right hand scrunching into the towels as deeply as the fused fingers and the brace around them will allow. Jackson has changed, too, faded overalls with multicolored flower patches and a liberal splattering of paint, one strap fastened and one hanging loose over an equally faded Rainbow Brite tee. He's tucked himself onto a corner of the couch and is leafing idly through a hardbound copy of Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture just picked up off the coffee table. He glances aside first at his buzzing phone and then at Steve when the other man returns with towels. "Joshua'll be here in a minute," he notes, and then, "better for what? Are you worried you'll pass out? Cuz the I guess the bed would be good. Otherwise --" His shoulder just hitches, small. There's not much more time to make a decision before a knock comes heavy and decisive at the door. Joshua is slouching against the wall outside, looking casual as well, sturdy work pants and a denim jacket over a smoke grey tee shirt with half-smudged Hebrew lettering bold across the chest, a red and black kippah on his head. Probably he is not trying to look overly somber, but the bags under his eyes and resting droop his face settles into manage to suit the occasion all the same. "Oh, no --" Steve answers, perhaps a bit too quickly. Blushes. "Well, I might, but it seems unlikely. More worried about bleeding on the common room furniture." He stiffens and goes directly to answer the knock without putting the towels down. "Hey," he says, pulling open the front door. Then again, quieter, "Hey. Come in, please. Can I get you something to -- drink?" He's already turning toward the kitchen before, apparently, remembering his hands are still full, and seems momentarily unsure what to do about that. His eyes are just a touch wider than usual, and it makes the pale blue of his irises even paler. "Really appreciate you doing this. I know you're busy." "Well. It's your furniture. Probably your call. He's good at this kind of thing, though. Towels should probably handle it --" Jax bites down on his lip, looking up at the knock. "Mostly. Hey." He tips his chin up to Joshua and sets the book back down on the table. His lips quirk to one side as he glances at Joshua's shirt. He gets up now, taking the towels from Steve and setting them on the coffee table. "Honey-honey, why don't you let me take care of the fussin' and you -- figure out where the most comfortable place for y'all is gonna be, I can't imagine this is gonna be. Like. The most pleasant of experience no matter what." "Brought my own snacks." Joshua pats at a messenger bag slung across his back, pulling himself away from the wall and sauntering into the apartment. His eyes scan it slowly. "Can always use the money. Got so many cousins and they keep getting married." He is making his way, unhurried, toward the couch, but turns to look at Steve with a slow knitted frown. "Neighbors home?" "Couch is comfortable," Steve concedes, surrendering the towels to Jax and continuing into the kitchen despite Joshua's reply. "I wasn't sure how much was -- well, I left that to Luci. Still, I reckon it's exhausting? Can't really imagine how this sort of thing even works." He fishes a brand new meat cleaver from a drawer, then a similarly pristine cutting board with deep blood grooves from a cabinet below it. "Lot of folks are, on Sundays. But I can keep it down." He does not, in fact, sound all that confident on this point. The smile he flashes Jax is queasy but determined. "Been through a lot of unpleasant experiences." A sudden flush spreads through Jax's cheeks at Joshua's comment, his eyebrows hiking and his mouth, for just a moment, opening into a small O. He busies himself with arranging the towels on the table, a touch more neatly than is likely necessary here. The sight of Steve returning with the cleaver puts a faint greenish flutter in the air around him. "Oh gosh! I mean -- this ain't gonna be no picnic, sugar, but there ain't no need to make it worse than it gotta be." He's up and flitting back to the kitchen, geeently folding his hands around Steve's before tug-tug-tugging the cleaver out of the other man's hands. "Why don't you let me take care of the -- slicing." Though he's setting the cleaver back in the drawer despite this offer, instead just filling two glasses with water before he returns to the living room himself. "Rested up yesterday." Joshua's eyes have gone just a bit wider. Just a bit. He gives his head a very small shake as he settles down on the couch, unstrapping his bag to set it on the floor. "Man wants to cleaver his own hand off," he replies, "who are we to get in his way. Once-in-a-lifetime experience, I'd imagine." A beat, before he amends, pensively. "I'd hope." Steve relinquishes his admittedly impressive knife, the furrow in his brows deep and deeply perplexed. "I -- well, I'm not very experienced in this particular. Area. For obvious --" He nods at Joshua by way of agreement. "But ah, I'm a bit tougher than the average fella and..." His eyes flick down over Jax, then back up, his face flushing. Then he looks at the drawer. Then at Jax. Then at Joshua, kind of imploringly. "You -- I guess you've chopped. A few more limbs than I have?" He might not have intended it to come out as a question, but he does follow Jax into the living room. "We don't own any saws or...axes." Still, he's gingerly undoing the brace around his mutilated right hand as he settles in between the other men. Jax has perched himself on the arm of the couch, on the far opposite side from Joshua. He can't help his look of disbelief at Steve's question, throwing a somewhat baffled glance to Joshua. "A few more -- Steve, what do you imagine I do in my spare time?" He hasn't gone to retrieve any saws, though. Just transferring the towels to Steve's lap, making a careful little nest for his hand to rest in. "Just -- let me know when you're ready, alright?" His hand rests, warm and heavy, on Steve's shoulder. Joshua has set a thermos on the table and is settling back on the couch, now, with a bottle of water. "You did grow up in Georgia," he offers, as if this is explanation itself. "And to be fair, for most people that number's an even zero." "Oh! I didn't mean --" Steve sputters, blushing even deeper. "But, cows -- cattle? -- on account of your farm --" His attention snaps to Joshua. "Wait, did you mean...people? Limbs?" He turns and looks up at Jax, wide-eyed, his shoulder tensed rock-hard. His right hand flexes. Or tries to flex, the movement truncated at the limit of its range of motion, and he winces. "I'm ready, but -- how?" Jax's cheeks redden, but there's no protest from him. A wrinkle of his nose, a duck of his head, a hard swallow. "Fair 'nuff." His hand squeezes harder against Steve's shoulder, then eases. "Alright, sugar, if you're sure. Deep breath, alright, and I'll count to three." His hand slips down to Steve's back, rubbing there in an absent circle. "One -- two --" Somewhere between two and three a cartoon guillotine appears situated just around Steve's wrist. On three -- with a classically sharp-twinkle gleam on the blade -- it drops silent and swift downward. Far more subtly, there's a translucent glimmer, impossibly thin where it shimmers briefly to life, slicing, as well, neatly through Steve's wrist. The slice through the arm is clean and thin -- so much so that it's almost cartoonish, too, the way the hand lingers just a moment before severing. Almost. The blood that swiftly follows, far less so, but Jax has another towel waiting to drop down over the newly truncated limb. Joshua splutters, coughs, lifts a hand to wipe at his suddenly watery eyes as he tries clearing his throat of the water abruptly lodged in it. He's staring at the guillotine -- where the guillotine just was. Just a (cough-cough-cough) almost-silence. Eventually he manages another gulp of water, and a hand extended toward Steve's. Steve nods jerkily. Leans just a bit harder into Jax's hand and relaxing beneath the touch -- if only by a fraction. His eyes go impossibly wider when the guillotine appears, but he does not move his hand. Does not move at all. Despite his earlier bravado he does cry out, but quickly stifles the noise with a sharp hiss of the breath he had been holding. He stares at the blood before Jax covers it up, his face going sheet white and his breathing rapid. The big hand he places into Joshua's is cold, shaking visibly. He does not pass out, but his lean is more of a slump, now. "M'sorry." It's just a soft murmur, down against Steve's hair as Jax curls his arm more snug around the other man's shoulders, pulling Steve juuust a little closer against his side. "If you did want to pass out, I wouldn't tell nobody. Think we'll be here --" He glances up to Joshua. "-- a while." "Only bespoke artisan limbs here. You want it done quick I'm sure Amazon can have a drone here within the hour." Joshua has flinched at Steve's cry, jaw tighter, but reaches to clasp the offered hand firm in his own. "Best get --" he's settling back on the couch, teeth sinking briefly against his lip as he glances to the nest of blood-sponge towels in Steve's lap. Almost apologetically, "comfortable."