Logs:Horror Stories

Horror Stories
Dramatis Personae Daiki, Jax	2021-12-28 "I'll try to be more eloquent on the record."
Location <NYC> Daiki's Apartment - Lower East Side
This fifth-story walkup is a tiny, drafty efficiency, but the interior is not as spartan as one might expect. The kitchen is well-provisioned and neatly organized, and the would-be dining area has been sacrificed in favor of a single larger sitting area centered around a sizeable chabudai in summer and kotatsu in winter. Beyond this, a folding paper screen with a sumi-e painting of a bamboo forest on it separates the common area from the sleeping area, which has a standing wardrobe and an old-fashioned writing desk as well as a cozy tatami'd nook for sleeping. The walls are adorned with several whimsically disturbing Jax Holland paintings of fantasy creatures, and a pair of plain, respectable calligraphy scrolls. For a tea aficionado, Daiki's coffee brewing skills are admirable if not quite Lucien Tessier grade. His tiny apartment smells richly of coffee, though his tea is hardly an afterthought for being lighter in fragrance. He has the look of a man who has tidied himself up in a hurry though not badly, his hair braided just a little too tight, the ironed lines on his white dress shirt and black trousers less than crisp, blue-black gradient skinny tie tucked into his vest just a hair crooked. He's also fussing around his kitchen far more than is usual for him or strictly necessary for gathering coffee and tea, sugar and creamer onto a black and red lacquer tray. For all the signs that he's having a difficult time of it, the tidal draw of his powers remains steadfastly muted. "I am sorry I've been so scarce," he says with a quick bow of his head as he settles the tray on the kotatsu between himself and his guest. "I have so much material to pore through for this piece." "I can't imagine it's been easy." Jax is fussing far less, for once, but then it isn't his house to be fussing in. He's settled himself comfortably on a cushion at the kotatsu, brightly colorful in overalls decorated with vivid venus flytrap design, a deep purple henley; a similar flytrap in his eyepatch occasionally snaps shut on insects that flit by. He nudges the tupperware of cookies he's brought -- strawberry and raspberry thumbprint -- nearer to Daiki as he takes his coffee with a nod of thanks. "Even knowin' what you're gettin' into, seems like -- a lot to hold." His gaze skims over Daiki's clothing quickly, then up to the other man's face. "You holdin' up?" Daiki settles seiza onto a cushion and busies himself arranging the tea and dessert plates from the tray just so. "It is," he agrees delicately, not actually looking at Jax, "a lot. I'm stressed, but I can handle stress." This last does not sound like bravado, just a plain statement of fact. "This exposé has to be iron clad, rigorous and shocking and just the right amount of brutal." He pries open the tupperware and takes one of each kind of cookie for his plate. Then wrinkles his nose primly and takes a third. "Plenty of people will deny it anyway, but we can't give them any ground. We only get one pre-emptive strike, I must make it count." "S'an awful lot of weight to be settlin' it on jus' your shoulders. You could get tens 'cross the board in all those and some folks will still find reason to blame us for our own oppression." Jax cups his hands round the coffee, drawing it near. The steam curling up wisps into idle shapes in front of him. A tiny dragon breathing its own puff of steam. A little sea monster chasing after a minnow. A missile exploding into a mushroom cloud. His fingers flick absently through the images. "I don't suppose there's more support I can offer you than cookies and a brief respite from sifting through horror?" Daiki's expression tightens, but he hides it partway behind his tea cup, inhaling the steam from the hojicha probably as yet too hot to drink. "I know. That's all the more reason it must be perfect." Whatever weight may be upon them, his shoulders are squared and his posture as impeccable as always. "I'm fine, and even if I weren't, I'm not sure how..." He watches Jax's steam art abstractly. "There's just no making any of this less horrible. But I didn't expect to have a hard time not including my own story." "Makes sense." Jax's absent doodles have transferred to Daiki's cup, now, a bevy of tengu hovering in the steam. "Ain't just your story." His teeth click down against his lip ring, wiggling slow at it. "I expect there'll be plenty of questions, after this breaks. Folks wantin' for follow up from any number of outlets. This might be the only chance for a preemptive strike but I don't see as it'll be the only chance to tell our stories. Only the beginning, of that." A smile twitches the corner of Daiki's mouth at the sight of the illusory tengu rising from his tea. "I know. And I know it will be very difficult the first time someone accuses me personally of lying, but I'll have a script for that. I think it's just..." His jaw tightens. "They killed my brother. We both fell through the cracks and nobody who knew us before has any idea what happened to us or that he never came out." The rising intensity of his voice echoes the rising intensity of him. "Mich will never get to tell his story. Most of what we have left is me and Hive, and Hive...no audience is going to understand that." "They did. An' he won't. An' that's an injustice ain't none of this gonna put right." Jax has been looking a bit too intently at Daiki -- he pulls his gaze down to his coffee with a faint flush. Takes a small sip, lets out a small breath. "I can't begin to know what that's like. But you gettin' this story out, that's opening the door to be able to tell more of the stories of the folks that never made it home." Daiki's posture relaxes, the inexorable pull of his powers easing along with it. "I'm sorry. You're right, of course." He only sounds a little stilted, but the effect fades as he settles. "This is so much bigger than me -- or Mich, or our whole damned lab." His control starts to waver again, but he keeps better hold of it this. "And it's not even as if I want to talk about what they did to us. There are horrors enough in any of these interviews, I just wasn't prepared to be so angry about what's not in them." He tilts his head very slightly at Jax. "Have you given any thought to telling your story?" "S'a whole lot to be angry about." Jax's eye widens in surprise at the question. "Me? I don't -- I mean, is that a -- I mean, I ain't --" His cheeks have flushed darker, faint whorls of light eddying out from his fingertips where they press to his mug. "I didn't know if -- didn't think -- m'sure you got plenty of other people what's actually, you know." One hand pries itself up from his mug to scrub against the side of his face. "More sympathetic, less -- terroristy." "I don't mean to pressure you. It must be complicated for you, probably more than I can understand." Daiki does finally take a sip of his tea, though he does not set the cup down after. "Remember, though, you are in the rest of our stories, even the ones out of Blackburn. I will do my level best with that material to counteract the 'terrorism' narrative, but you're going to be part of this piece no matter what." He seems to be giving serious thought to actually eating a cookie, though he hasn't quite gotten there yet. "If you feel up to talk about your own experiences, there's so much more than terrorism. The raids speak for themselves quite eloquently through the people you saved." There's just the faintest dimple between his brows here. "Well. Not always eloquently." "Oh!" Jax doesn't blink, but the flytrap in his eyepatch snaps closed on nothing. "I hadn't thought -- oh." For a brief moment the air around him tints red. The glow fades as he exhales. "Gosh, I -- if you think it'd help I'll talk t'you for sure, I just -- didn't want to complicate things, y'know? Figured you had your work cut out for you sure 'nough already making the folks look good who -- actually look good. Or," he's brows knit here, "look horrifying. Ngh. You know what I mean." His palm scrubs his cheek again. "I'll try to be more eloquent on the record." "It will help." Daiki takes another sip of his tea and relinquishes the cup. "It will also put you under a great deal scrutiny, but that will happen even if you keep quiet. Far better, I think, to have some control over your presentation -- a family man, a hard worker, a steadfast friend." He picks up one of the strawberry cookies and gestures between himself and Jax. "I'll take eloquence if that's in the cards, but I'll be glad for whatever you give me. I know it won't be easy for you, either, but on a narrative level, you tie this together." He does finally take a bite, slow and appreciative. His eyes dart to his laptop, firmly closed on the far side of the kotatsu, waiting for him to get back to work. "Without you, it's all just horror stories." "Okay. Okay." Jax takes another sip of his coffee, his fingers tight around the cup. "Don't think cookies is thanks enough for the work you're puttin' into this, but --" He glances toward Daiki's laptop, as well. "Without you, wouldn't even be no stories. That's savin' people, too." "So is doing mission support, or logistics, or funding, or comms, or aftercare. There are so many heroes in our lives, and maybe someday we can tell the whole story. But." Daiki shakes his head and looks down at his plate. "That isn't the story we want or need people to hear right now. I'm not telling it alone, and if I don't tell it, someone else would. Someone --" He blinks up at Jax, his expression kind of wondering. "Someone has to." "If it weren't you," Jax replies with a small wrinkle of his nose, "it'd prob'ly be them, sooner or later. I know which I'd prefer." He plucks up a cookie now, taking a delicate nibble. "I just don't want you to lose sight when you're tellin' all these other stories. The world might not get to hear yours just this minute but it don't make it no less a part of all this. A part of all -- us."