Logs:Loose Piece

Loose Piece
Dramatis Personae Joshua, Roscoe	2023-08-23 "Ma! I'm leaving the door open."
Location <BOS> Vo Apartment
It's not quite late enough for dinner, except perhaps for the over-seventy crowd. Kinda muggy, kinda warm. Joshua does not look much invested in visiting a beauty salon, his hair far too shaggy, his clothes aggressively and unfashionably Boring (jeans, an FDNY tee shirt.) Still, he's paced by this beauty salon several times before finally heading inside. In fairness, he doesn't stop for a cut; he's nodding politely to the workers and heading through to the stairs and the apartments above. Double checks his phone before buzzing at one door. Roscoe gets to the door first; there is a sound of general mayhem from within that comes just before the door swings open; behind it, Roscoe is barefoot in basketball shorts and a plain white T-shirt. Probably he knew who was at the door before he opened it, for he wastes no time in saying, "What the fuck!" Maybe this is rude. It would be ruder if it were not so gleeful. He follows it at once with, "Oh, sorry," just as someone behind him in the apartment says, "Roscoe!" She appears a moment later, a mousy Asian woman few inches shorter than her son, still wearing yellow dishwashing gloves, with an oddly familiar pinched frown. "Yes?" she says, more curtly than she might have if Roscoe hadn't just sworn. "What the --" Joshua is starting to say right back, but this hitches abruptly when there is Noise behind Roscoe. He stands up just a little straighter, rearranges his expression into -- something still dour but not so aggressively so. "Mrs. Vo?" The small shift of his hands implies he has almost offered one for a handshake; took stock of the dishwashing gloves, reconsidered; he's folding his hands in front of him instead. "Hi. I'm so sorry to interrupt your evening. My name is Joshua Salinas -- I work at a school down in New York. A couple of our students were -- very unfortunately detained with your son earlier this summer. It's been -- kind of an ordeal for a lot of the kids getting out and some of them just wanted to make sure Roscoe's doing okay." Mrs. Vo looks from Joshua to Roscoe, one eyebrow raising suspiciously. "Oh," she says questioningly. "Your students --" she seems to know at once who Joshua is talking about, seems to decide after a moment that this is inoffensive enough. She fusses at the gloves. "You want to come in and talk? You want... I can get... It's a mess inside," she says apologetically, but she is stepping back, nudging Roscoe with an elbow to step back too. It is, actually, not a mess inside, but the amount of clutter suggests that this is a family that does not like throwing things away; there is a large pile of shoes at the door, most of which clearly do not belong to Roscoe. Mrs. Vo is going back to the dishes, saying something very quietly into Roscoe's ear before she does. Roscoe is going straight to what is almost certainly his room, saying loudly, "Ma! I'm leaving the door open." Probably this is a joke; the doorframe is empty. There is a large cushioned saucer chair opposite the bed if Joshua wants to sit, but Roscoe is not sitting -- he checks in the direction of the kitchen before he says, again, "What the fuck! I thought you were dead." Joshua dips his head as he enters, offering Mrs. Vo an appreciative, "Thank you, and please don't worry about the..." He doesn't say mess, although he does hesitate in the doorway. He's mostly looking at the pile of shoes and after a small and uncertain pause tugging his sneakers off to set them beside and tag after Roscoe. He stops just outside the room, jaw briefly gone tighter as he looks at the empty doorway. He's chewing slowly on one corner of his lip as he drops heavily into the saucer chair. "Got better," he offers with a small hitch of shoulder. "How's --" There's a small hitch in his words as he glances again to the doorway, then up to the ceiling. "... this jail?" Roscoe sits only after Joshua does, perches against the edge of his bed -- "I can never tell if you're joking," he says. "Jesus-ass mutation." He tucks his hands under his arms, follows Joshua's gaze out at the hallway, then up at the ceiling, face just starting to pinch into a frown. "I'm good," he says. "Eating real food again. Playing Minecraft. Staying out of trouble. How's -- wait, do you know those kids?" "I look like I'm joking?" The look Joshua levels on Roscoe is -- overall fairly similar to most of his looks, really, drooping like he's been left out in the rain a bit too long. "Baruch HaShem," he's saying to Minecraft, at least, though through most of the rest he's just chewing still at his lip. "Work at their school." His brow creases a little uncertainly. "-- s'the date. You in class yet?" Roscoe still looks at Joshua for a long moment before he says, lips just starting to twitch into a smile, "Nah, I still can't tell." The smile does not stick; he is tilting his head in contemplation. "Probably wouldn't have changed anything," he laments, "But, damn, you could've been giving them like, bespoke preppie prison advice. They were out there calling their gang a cohort." Maybe this is a sliiiight stretch of the situation. Roscoe tucks his arms in tighter. "Starting next week," he says. "Hey, you work at a school. If I already did two months of ninth grade, I should just get to skip it this time, right?" "Torture jail grad school?" Joshua has hfffd a small and amused breath at this, though soon after he's growing just a little more tense through the shoulders. "If I'd known --" doesn't actually go anywhere, just trails off into a deliberate releasing of his clenched shoulders and another sharp huff. "Been in the labs four times. Got killed the last one. My advice, maybe --" He holds up forefinger and thumb close together. "Pinch of salt." His mouth twists to the side, eyebrows hiking. "Personally feel like you should get lab credit. School's halfway to jail already, you were getting some of the experience. Might be a hard sell with, uh, actual teachers, though." Roscoe's expression flickers slightly at 'Got killed the last one.' Maybe he did think (hope?) Joshua was joking. "Yeah," he says. "They decided to throw a whole riot even without talking to you, anyway, I had nothing to do with that." He says this half-proudly and half-defensively, like he still can't make up his mind what he thinks of it in retrospect. His shoulders lift a little -- "Heh, lab credit," he says. "You're not a teacher? Please tell me you're not admin -- no, wait -- first tell me is everyone else okay." "Nothing?" Joshua lifts a skeptical eyebrow. "Well, maybe next..." He doesn't finish time, just goes a slight shade paler and thinks better of this. "Dunno. What's okay?" He rolls his shoulder in a small shrug. "Think they're mostly back to real food and Minecraft. Think okay is a process. They --" He frowns, hand dropping to toy with one of the knotted string tassels dangling from under his shirt. "Mostly got people around who get it. Can help." "Okay, I had almost nothing to do with it," Roscoe amends, rolling his eyes; there is a smile starting to pull at his lips, but it drops back away when he looks back at Joshua. "I'unno. Not actively in crisis?" He is shifting slowly to sit more comfortably on his bed, pulling one leg in front of him, wrapping his arms around it and settling his chin onto his knee -- when he speaks, his head bobs up and down with the motion. "Naomi says a lotta people in New York come out the labs. I haven't met anybody out here. My sister's boyfriend was in juvie, way back, but like... human juvie." This amendment does pulls a smile out of Joshua, a very brief rearrangement of the sagging lines of his face into a lighter amusement that mostly manages to avoid looking too proud. "Mnh. Yeah. S'a lot of us. A community kinda grows its own gravity, eventually. People move because other people are there." He flicks a brief glance to the door(frame) and then up to the ceiling. "Don't suppose you'd wanna go to a bougie-as-hell prep school?" "Heh. You're telling me, I live in Chinatown." Roscoe's gaze is no longer on Joshua, but flicking slowly around the room. Or -- maybe not this room. His arms pull in around his leg; his eyes flatten with amusement or suspicion or possibly both. "This is the same bougie-as-hell prep school I've heard about with, like, the hot tub patio, and the ponies, and the Prometheus field trip? Hard pass." "That field trip was highly unapproved." Joshua doesn't give any further dissent from Roscoe's Xavier's assessment, only adding: "They didn't mention the sailing classes? On a private lake." There's a low amusement in his voice. "Prometheus dropped me out of high school but mine didn't even have a gym." His hand lifts, rubbing slow at the back of his neck. "... they let you on a phone? Be nice to know you're staying alive." "Country Club High," mumbles Roscoe, but his amused-suspicious squint is easing into plain amusement. "I feel like I met every nonwhite kid at this school already." He flutters his fingers where they're gripping loosely around his ankle -- "Not yet. But I'm working on it," he is quick to reassure Joshua. "I think they're gonna cave once I start school." "At least two Asian kids skipped the terrorism," Joshua informs Roscoe. "Might've met most, though." His hand shifts; he worries at the edge of a thumbnail between his teeth. The frown that scrunches his face can only go so far towards increasing the moroseness of his expression, but it's trying. "Hngh." He drops his hand back to his lap. "I'll leave my number. I don't have much... social media." Roscoe is busy looking elsewhere for a moment -- his eyes are on Joshua, but without seeing him -- before he blinks, and his expression pinches into a slight, confused frown, his chin lifting off his knee. Still, he says, "Yeah, for sure. You need a pen?" Even before Joshua can answer he is scooting backward in bed, one hand darting into the gap between the frame and his mattress. Joshua has gotten a pen, somewhere in the interval -- from his pocket? From somewhere? It's hard to say, but he's watching Roscoe dig into his Stash Spot with a small twitch of lips and his pen vanishes back to wherever his sleight-of-hand retrieved it from. "Hoping to hear about your crummy new jail soon enough or else I'll have to haul ass back to Boston." He is only an adopted New Yorker, but he says Boston with a native's disdain. "You still on some disciplinary shit by then, I got some experience smuggling phones into jail." Roscoe was too busy unearthing his own pen to see Joshua's; the one he holds out is cheap white plastic with "Lassiter Research Facility" printed on it in taupe. A moment later Roscoe holds out a pad of lime green Post-Its too. His expression is pulling into a more pronounced frown, but he's biting his lip, he's not arguing, he's taking a long time to think before he exhales forcefully -- "Yeah, okay. Just there's not much to tell." Joshua leans forward, taking pen and Post-Its. He's jotting his number down and returning both to Roscoe, though not before giving a long scowl to the pen. "Supposed to have a fuller life in freedom than in jail." "I do lots of things I'm not supposed to," says Roscoe, shrugging. "I'll walk you back out." "Mngh." Joshua gets to his feet slowly, hands tucking into his pockets. He pauses in the doorway, casting a brief glance to Roscoe, teeth sinking down against his lip. But then he just heads towards the front door, stopping only long enough to offer a polite good evening to Mrs. Vo before grabbing his shoes and heading out.