Logs:Re/connecting

Re/connecting
Dramatis Personae Hive, Lily
In Absentia	2020-10-17 << you were/we were >>
Location <NYC> Evolve Cafe - Lower East Side
Spacious and open, this coffeeshop has a somewhat industrial feel to it, grey resin floors below and exposed-beam ceilings that have been painted up in a dancing swirl of abstract whorls and starbursts, a riot of colour splashed against a white background. The walls alternate between brick and cheerfully lime-green painted wood that extends to the paneling beneath the brushed-steel countertops. There's an abundance of light, though rather than windows (which are scarce) it comes from plentiful hanging steel lamps. The walls here are home to artwork available for sale; though the roster of prints and paintings and drawings and photographs changes on a regular basis it has one thing in common -- all the artists displayed are mutants. The seating spaced around the room is spread out enough to keep the room from feeling cluttered. Black chairs, square black tables that mostly seat two or four though they're frequently pushed around and rearranged to make space for larger parties. In the back corner of the room is more comfortable seating, a few large black-corduroy sofas and armchairs with wide tables between them. There's a shelf of card and board games back here available for customers to sit and play. The chalkboard menus hanging behind the counter change frequently, always home to a wide variety of drinks (with an impressive roster of fair-trade coffees and teas largely featured) though their sandwiches and wraps and soups and snacks of the day change often. An often-changing variety of baked goods sit behind the display case at the counter halfway back in the room, and the opposite side of the counter holds a small selection of homemade ice creams. A pair of single-user bathrooms flanks the stairway in back of the cafe; at night, the thump of music can be heard from above, coming from the adjoining nightclub of the same name that sits up the stairs above the coffeehouse. It's been a long night. A very long night. Somewhere not too far away from here, a police station has finally stopped burning. There's still sirens wailing, in the distance, still some diehard marchers out in the streets, several knots of roving humans still searching for mutants to lay into, but the clouds of tear gas have mostly tapered off. Evolve, tonight, chose not to open its nightclub; though its doors are open the cafe has been converted into a safe decompression zone for people escaping the violence. It's quieter now than it was a bit earlier. A couple kids have fallen asleep on the back couches, a pair of medics are refilling their water bottles, a small cluster of people dressed all in black huddle near the back of the room. Over at a table in the corner, Hive doesn't seem to have come here with anybody. He's dressed in jeans, heavy workboots, an aging black and white flannel unbuttoned over a moss green t-shirt with a black graphic of a banyan tree superimposed on the outline of a single banyan leaf. There's stubble on his chin, dark shadows under his eyes, his angular face sallower than it ought to be. There's a large cup of coffee on the table in front of him that he has not, evidently, touched in a long time or perhaps at all; the feather design carefully swirled into his latte foam has not been disrupted. His hands clasp around the now-cold mug, and though his kind of half-lidded mostly-glazed eyes don't really seem to be taking in very much around him, his expansive mental awareness is as keen as ever. In another corner, Lily sits on the ground, back propped up against the wall, phone resting on her pulled-up knees as it charges through the outlet next to her. With one finger, she’s scrolling through her notifications - <<Jesus, who are these people?>> - as she finally manages to calm down. She’s still overwhelmed by the events of the night, but the world is smaller inside the cafe, more manageable. Lily looks up from her screen, rolls her head around on her neck as a stretch and gazes around the room. <<No Ryan, no Shane…>> She wants so badly to check in with at least one familiar face, but there are none to be seen. Except - quickly Lily glances down at her phone again, pulling up a list she made from Ryan’s rundown. <<Well, maybe,>> she thinks. <<If I’m wrong, that will be very embarrassing, But it looks like him.” She extracts herself from the floor slowly, charger and phone going back into her handbag. She’s not dressed for tonight - her white wool sweater is newly torn and unravelling where she scrambled off pavement, dirt on the knees of her jeans. Her hair is falling out of her ponytail, a strand catching on her lip when she sits down at the table with Hive. “Excuse me,” Lily says softly. “Are you Hive? “ Hive is slow to respond. His eyes stay fixed on his coffee, his fingers giving only a small twitch. For the briefest of moment there's an added pressure somewhere behind Lily's eyes, like the beginnings of a headache that doesn't materialize before it fades. "Right now?" His voice is gruff and a little scratchy, his brows dipping inward. It takes another beat before he's apparently come to terms with some sort of answer: "Yeah. Think so. If you're looking for Shane, he got arrested. I'm sure they'll all be out in the morning or -- Monday at least." <<Right now?>> The answer throws Lily off guard. “Oh.” Then, another, softer “oh”. Lily sets her bag on the table. <<Telepath, or good guesser?>> Her lips press together for a moment. <<Should I- yes.>> Lily‘s mouth twitches up in something approximating a smile. “Ryan said I should introduce myself- I’m Lily. I wish we could have met in better circumstances.” "Telepath," Hive answers directly, "but Shane owns this place, so it's a reasonable..." This trails off. His hands tighten slowly around his coffee, and his eyes open only fractionally wider. "You're --" He hasn't looked up, still; his rough voice has dropped to something barely audible. That pressure returns, but this time stays, grows, a heavy psionic presence that wraps itself around Lily's mind. It blossoms into a pain, a push of mental energy digging itself into her mind and rooting there -- -- but this, too, gives way. When the pressure clears Lily's perspective has shifted. Can still see Hive where he slouches unmoving in his chair -- can feel, now, the cold ceramic cup in his hands, can hear the press of minds clattering in (ceaseless) (irritating) at their awareness, feel the exhausted itch of sleep-deprived eyes, feel the surface-level annoyances (too cold in here) (too fucking loud) he's fixating on in an effort to ignore the yawning chasm that lies beneath. Clearer, over this, a memory, at once hers and not hers; they're tucked into comfortably squishy and brightly-colored chairs in the kids corner of the library, looking at her younger self through someone-else's-eyes as a much (much) smaller Lily explains, eager and animated, about the way a woodpecker's tongue curls around its skull to cushion its brain, his own thoughts simultaneously eager to one-up this with a Still Cooler biology fact and derailed by wonder at What On Earth Are Birds, Even. A memory, at once hers and not hers; a dull hollow ache, sitting on a hard bench in a bland institutional cafeteria, curling a (much smaller, much more gaunt, dressed in scrubs rather than his sharply tailored suits) Shane under an arm: "I'm sure we'll see them again." A memory, at once hers and not hers; perched on the edge of a fountain, cheek pressing against the rough wool of Hive's peacoat, the garden around them glittering with ice and twinkling string lights alike -- that ache somewhat more distant but no less acute, a wrapped present in his hands that he can't bring himself to open. The shifting flutter of recollections shatters, collapses only into a vast emptiness. Perhaps Lily is still breathing, but it certainly feels like she isn't, for a moment; Hive's mouth has gone slightly open on a half-gasped breath that catches and doesn't finish, and the hard squeeze in his chest carries over to hers. << Where have you been >> -- in the shared psionic space this comes, not with accusation but with a desperate grief. The world outside of them, outside of this, couldn’t seem further away. Lily’s fingers grip onto the edges of the table, knuckles white as she tries to breathe through the lump in her- their? - throat. There is so much pain and it feels so loud, like a pounding in her ears that she can’t block out. <<What- how->> Each nascent thought is drowned out by the roar of grief , wet gathering at her eyes. <<Where have you been I was looking I was waiting I though you were dead I thought you never forgave ->> Another ragged breath. <<You aren’t him.>> She reaches out for a coffee cup that isn’t on her end of the table. <<But you are? We are?>> << We are, >> is drawn in to the firmly rooted grip of Hive's mind, turned over, blossoms into its own quiet chorus, << we are >> << we are >> << we are >>, an determined echo that tears further at the ragged edges of that immense hole within them. The memories here are vaguer, ill-formed and blurring into each other; the clatter of dice rattling in Dawson's mechanical hand; a bright excited light in their mind at the sight of a flicker darting between the trees, the comforting wholeness of their minds blending back together after the end of a too-long shift. Hive exhales shakily, blinking slow on the tears that have gathered there as well. Somewhere within them that sure echo is withering and dropping away. << We were. >> Her hand grasps at nothing, knocks her handbag onto its side instead. <<you were/we were>> rolls around in her mind, their mind. The past tense is its own pain, like opening a scab. A memory, hers and now theirs: screaming in the kitchen at their parents, hot tears making the whole world swim, looking across the shared room at an empty bed, books stacked in a corner like he might still come home. An overwhelming feeling powerlessness. Flashes of other moments: looking for him on every street corner, awkwardly hanging on the edge of mutant groups, hiding herself but hoping, just hoping that there would be someone she knew there. Giving up, choosing to believe something horrible rather than a betrayal. All this Lily shoves into their shared consciousness. <<I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry>>. A tear splashes on the table, then another. These flashes whirl furious and chaotic together with others, fragmented and disjointed. The days blending into each other in a cold dark cell, the hope that his family might come for him fading. A stake president's firm admonishment that there's no place for people like him in eternity. This stern chiding ringing in his thoughts through the years. A pile of letters written but never sent. An acceptance letter from BYU and the wishful flare it brings. Throwing himself fiercely into his studies when he ultimately returned to New York, alone. Browsing job openings for doctors in the Salt Lake area. Hive's vision has blurred, too. His breathing more ragged, tears slipping down his cheeks. There's a mental tug, pulling back where his mind has entwined itself with Lily's, uprooting itself as his hand lifts to press his knuckles hard against his mouth. Her senses return to her in an abrupt snap; Hive's shoulders have hunched, shaking inside his too-large flannel. "I'm so sorry," he whispers, down towards his coffee. "I've wanted to meet you for so long." This time when the mental pressure returns it holds back, a questioning feel buried in the psionic contact. He pulls his eyes up slowly, looking at Lily for the first time. "Do you want to see the Dawson I knew?" When she’s back, just Lily, her hands are trembling. She’s slow to reach for her bag, <<no tissues>>, offers Hive a brown coffee shop napkin instead. Another one stays in her hand, though she doesn’t actually dry her face. One wet sob escapes her throat when Hive speaks to her again, and Lily slaps a hand over her mouth to contain it. <<That was too much/I need to see more>> run on top of each other in her mind- she’s afraid of the pressure when it returns behind her eyes, but nods slowly anyway. Lily takes a shallow breath, meets Hive’s gaze. “Yes, please.” Hive takes the napkin with a mechanical nod. Immediately starts wringing it between his hands, fingers picking its edges into smaller scraps. There is pain, still, but more care this time in the slow unfurl of roots that latch into her mind and dig themselves deep, a more gradual shift of consciousness as he folds their minds into one. An initial powerful flood of love, care, fierce protectiveness, its intensity almost out of proportion with the quiet simple memory that surfaces first. Gathering wallet and keys and jacket in a vaguely harried morning rush; the rapid flutter-blink feel of Dawson at the edge of their awareness, on his way out of the apartment. That same flutter returning a split second later, resolving now into the actual shape of him; crisp khakis, neat green polo, light canvas jacket, a vague fond exasperation stamped into his scarred face. No words exchanged, only a staying hand on Hive's shoulder, an untying of his tie and retying it far neater, more deft than the sleek tentacle-like prosthesis he wears looks like it ought to be. Then gone again in just another flash. The intensity fades as Hive adjusts their connection, careful and measured now with a more metered flow of thought between them. He drags his cup of coffee closer, watching the little feather design shift and wobble in its foam. << (too much) >> echoes quietly back to Lily, in her own voice -- now theirs -- << (we have so much more.) >>