Logs:How Does Your Garden Grow?

How Does Your Garden Grow?
Dramatis Personae Anahita, DJ, Hive
In Absentia Cyan, Kadar, Joshua, Nandini	2025-01-24 "You're gonna want a drink." (a short while after attempting to talk to Cyan.)
Location <NYC> La Lyre d'Or, Le Bonne Entente - Astoria, Queens
Occupying part of what had been the old cathedral's crypt, this bar and lounge is sumptuous in black and gold, a perfect complement to the club next door. The walls are decorated with a wide variety of beautifully crafted musical instruments from around the world, and rumor has it they are all as functional as the gleaming black grand piano to one side of the stage. The bar itself is a long curve of polished black marble veined with gold, softly lit from below, and the stools surpassingly comfortable. In addition to the round tables arrayed around the stage in the center of the space, there are cozy upholstered booths a half-level up and pairs of armchairs tucked into intimate nooks here and there. On most nights there is live music here in a wide range of genres and styles, and for more crowded shows of a certain caliber, the tables can be cleared away for more space. The bar is not actually open yet. It's empty, pristine, no music, no staff -- well, no staff who actually works here. The hotel staff, though, not only know these particular individuals quite well but well understand Extenuating Exasperating Client Circumstances, and so currently there are just a couple people who have been let in to the empty bar. DJ has tucked generous payment for his filching into a neatly labeled envelope and is currently slipping back around the bar. He's poured on generous measure of very good Scotch; in his other hand there's a root beer, doctored liberally with coconut syrup, vanilla creamer, whipped cream on top. He's still in his very bland work attire but has given up on his Pleasant Expression, just a deep exhaustion written on his face. He returns to the plush booth, sets the Scotch down on a napkin, and slumps in the other side with his dirty soda. At the booth, Anahita nods her thanks and settles her hands around the smooth glass without lifting it just yet. She is wearing a yellow blouse in a peached fabric that gives the faint suggestion of buttercup petals, a long black yoked skirt in supple suede, and simple, sensible black ankle boots, a red shayla draped loosely about her head and shoulders like a cowl. "I am sorry to have dragged you into all of that. I knew they had hang-ups." Hive is just shuffling in, slow and unconfident -- despite the recent excision nominally intended to reduce his Brain Problems, he's leaning far more heavily on his cane right now than he had been in weeks before. He's bundled as is his habit, frat sweatshirt over several layers beneath, fleecy beanie pulled down over his shaved head, warm sweatpants, fluffy socks together with his plush lined moccasins. He does not get himself a drink -- just trudges closer and then stops, his hand tighter on his cane and his eyes darting uncertainly from Anahita's side of the booth to DJ's with no evident ability to settle the war in his mind. Instead of taking a seat he just offers a gruff: "So what the fuck." "Some Promethean's going to stab them over those hang-ups someday," DJ is saying heavy and matter-of-fact, "and they'll fully deserve it." The sudden and intense swell of desire that spikes in DJ is wildly out of proportion to Hive's whole unkempt-sweatpants-slouchy look, but it's there all the same. He takes a slow sip of his soda as he tries to consider What The Fuck and comes up with only furiously uncharitable answers. He sets them aside -- for now -- to consider more judiciously which part is warranted and which part is trauma reflex, and by the time he's done this he's also come to a conclusion, moving inside to allow Hive space beside him on the bench. "You're gonna want a drink." "I did not realize they were quite so imprudent in the expression of their hang-ups." Anahita has been mentally reviewing snippets of conversation with her housemate leading up to her dragging DJ into "all of that". "I should have taken it as a warning when they asked me yet again, right before you walked in, whether I was sure you were 'okay.'" Though she does not lean on "yet again" a great deal in verbal emphasis, there is a well of context beneath it in her mind filled with her many assurances, the pains she took to set up the appointment somewhere minimally triggering, the promise she had made Cyan herself. This subsides with the wordless alarm in her mind at the sight of Hive, confusion about his presence shoved well aside in favor of noting the sudden downturn in his mobility. Her eyes slip between the two men, a fluid calculation churning in her mind over how an abrupt deterioration in his health might intersect with their recent breakup. "I can go and fetch you one," she offers lightly. Hive blushes, cheeks flushing dark and his eyes lowering. He does take the seat, tucking himself in beside DJ with a sharp relieved breath once he's off his feet. His mouth is working, but no immediate words come out. In a frustrated compensation his mind is stretching out, pressing hard up against DJ's in rough-jostling plea for help here that pulls back almost as soon as it's begun. He rubs hard at his head and slouches lower, nodding slow at the offer of drink but not offering any preferences. His eye has scrunched up while he tries to sort through the others various annoyances and only succeeds in building his own. There is at least less sharpness in his repetition: "... what the fuck." "Cider for him." DJ starts to lift his arm. Drops it again shy of actually curling around Hive's shoulders. He puts both hands firm around his glass, but in trade for this his mind is opening in a reflex that at the forefront of his brain has solidly logicked itself out to be an offer of help, a supplement to the movement-and-language pieces just carved out of Hive's temporal and frontal lobes and in need of some rehab. Behind this the sense of yearning, ache, a desperate desire for comfort himself, has not quite fit itself into his conscious self-conception. "Anahita's housemate," he's supplementing this with snippets of memory -- not one but two alleyway rescues, the growled accusation flung cruelly outside the clinic, the entire exchange from this afternoon filtered and distorted in perspective with his hurt and irritation, "-- is on a real teenage kick." Anahita comes very close to groaning aloud at DJ's summation of the situation, but just manages to contain it to a solemn "mm." She pushes slowly to her feet, her weariness less physical than emotional. "I have been trying to persuade them to seek medical care. They were in Varela, and had developed a...strong aversion." She considers her own ruthlessly managed horror of clinical settings and reflects that she probably does not seek medical care as readily or as often herself as a woman of her age probably ought. "And a penchant for making it other people's problem." She goes to the bar and returns with a tall glass of hard cider and another of water for Hive. "Oh, that." Did Hive already know about any of this, absolutely not, but as his mind grasps hungry and fierce for DJ's, melds the other man into his own it's easy enough for the other man, at least, to feel the intent lost to his currently faulty language processing: that asshole, his own brief Cyan-encounter that had left only the standard level of reflexive annoyance in his mind. Dutifully he is upgrading his background impersonal level of irritation to a fiercer vitriol in accordance with Anyone Who Hurts His Person, and is just as immediately feeling a flood of confused uncertainty about if DJ actually is that, anymore. The flood of shared-mind and shared-memory transfers Hive's own experience of this afternoon -- Kadar and his deeply disturbing surgery; immediately scheduled follow up with Joshua interrupted by Other Emergency (NOS). Oddly, the clarification of third interruption doesn't make him particularly more cranky on his own behalf, but then again, the prickly thrash of his crankiness has been fairly solidly already directed at the insult to DJ and Anahita. He nods in thanks and takes his glass. It's no more eloquent than the first two times, but a lot more vehement, when he asserts: "What the fuck." There's no uncertainty in DJ's mind. Questions about propriety, yes; questions about what attentions would be welcome between them right now, questions about what on earth the future will look like. But as his mind sighs gratefully back entwined, the rightness of it, the them-ness, the whole and consuming intensity with which the other man feels like his home, is sure and certain. Somewhat automatically he's taking over where Hive's brain is floundering, slotting the steadiness of his hands, the ease of his words, into the broken gaps. A wordless question, too, hovering over the ceaseless flood of Other Minds that DJ, at least, can quiet. "Kadar just pulled out a chunk of his brain," he is filling in for Anahita, which might seem a non-sequitur except for the casual follow up: "Joshua was trying to clean up when, uh." Well, the rest of the story she was here for. He leans back (somewhat incidentally letting his arm tuck against Hive's) and shakes his head. "I'd be hard pressed to name five people I'm close to without similar trauma. The labs are going to be stealing our people's lives a long time yet." Anahita's eyes widen with DJ's information, but she only flails mentally for a fraction of a second before realizing by context -- up to and including the fact that Kadar is still alive -- that "pulled out a chunk of his brain" must have been a consensual medical procedure. It takes her a few more seconds longer to arrive at the murky hopeful conclusion that Hive might now be cured, even if Joshua was unable to clean up as thoroughly as he had meant to. "I am sorry that your treatment was interrupted," is what she says after the long intervening silence. She looks down at where her fingers have tangled into the tassels of her shayla, and extricates them to pick up her glass for a long, slow sip. "I should not be so surprised at their behavior. When I talked to them about managing their power, their fear overrode consideration of everything else." She presses her fingertips into the smooth glass. "Comfort. Practicality. Safety -- their own and everyone else's. But they are scientifically-minded, and I thought if I could just get them to speak to a doctor under circumstances that felt safe they might see reason." Her anger rises again, sharp and bitter. "I think they still do not understand why I was angry." << Please >> is immediate and fierce, no question at all that Hive would rather shut the telepathic noise out. "-- mostly tumor," he's adding, still gruff but more easily now as he leans into DJ's support, "Hard not to get some healthy brain with it. Joshua was gonna -- rebuild. Spot check the cancer." He shrugs. "Gonna need a lot of. Sessions. Couple more days won't kill me." Though he is admittedly definitely not loving the delay on Regaining Motor Function. He's leaning hard into DJ's support as he picks his glass up, somewhat startled -- but only for an instant -- to find his grip steady. "... you think they'll listen to you later?" "They don't seem," DJ is saying very carefully -- not so much because he's finding the words hard to pick but because he is still devoting a considerable amount of his brain to finding the weak spots in Hive's and shoring them up, then clamping down firm and tight on the telepathic spill, "to have a lot of consideration --" If there was more to this sentence it doesn't come out, just truncating there and letting it fall into a small silence. He sips slowly at his soda again. His plastic finger clicks lightly against the glass. "They talked as if they thought you were angry they didn't go with me." Anahita pulls her scarf further forward before dropping her hands back to the lowball glass. "I do not know. To say something cruel and thoughtless in a moment of panic is one thing. To double down on it when called on it is something else." She takes another sip and stares down into her scotch. "They cared more that I was angry than that they had hurt DJ. But." She breathes out slowly. "They did care that I was angry. Caring has to start somewhere. I am good at growing plants." Her eyes flick up to the men, then back down. "I have not had the best track record with growing people." "Your anger affects them. DJ's hurt doesn't." Hive is starting now to slouch more physically against DJ, too, the mental support translating almost seamlessly into a greater outward ease. He takes another gulp of cider, more relaxed about this as well with his psionic leash. "... worst plants can do is kill you. People are way thornier." DJ curls his arm around Hive's shoulder, now. The hold of his mind is easing up once he's found all the places that need some bolstering, a sort of mental relaxing of muscles Hive can feel untensing around him. "Plants don't tend to fight against their tending, do they?" He sounds wry. "I don't think -- growing people can't be a unilateral process." "Plants do fight against their tending, sometimes." Anahita raises her glass and sips slowly. "The only person I ever raised tore my heart out." She pulls a hand from the glass and lays it over her chest as if expecting to find an actual physical wound there. "Maybe I was too unilateral." She drinks again. "Then again, I was not nearly so good at gardening then, either." "Dunno how you decide too. Be a shitty life if we didn't let anyone in just because some people are assholes with it." Hive lowers his glass. His eyes have shifted to watch the jerky shifts of DJ's mechanical fingers. His gaze snaps away, shifting to where Anahita's hand lies over her chest. "... but. Get after everyone else to look after themselves so much. Feel like you could take a page out of your own book some time." DJ's eyebrows lift, his head tipping to the side in a small and contemplative agreement. "... You have been momming half the community since you got back." He swirls his straw in his glass, mixing the melting whipped cream into the lightening soda before he takes another drink. "If war taught me anything -- you can get lax on taking care of yourself, or you can take care of endless people who take it for granted, but you can't do both. That watering can'll just run dry." Anahita lowers her hand and curls her fingers into the edge of her scarf again. She is quiet for several more seconds. "I do not think our community takes me for granted." Her eyes are on the empty tabletop between herself and the two men, but even without specific telepathic insight the weight of her gratitude is written in the broadening curve of lips that is not quite a smile. "But I am a bit of a hypocrite in some respects." She states this matter-of-factly, and does not sound particularly ashamed of it. "I will make an appointment to see Nandini." There is no reluctance in this, either, but she does take a deeper draw of her whisky after saying it. "And I would be most grateful if one of you would accompany me to the clinic for it."