Logs:Something New

Something New
cn: brief violence, implied sex w some dubious psionic consent
Dramatis Personae DJ, Hive
In Absentia	2021-12-01 << can't be what we were >> (followed by an awkward morning after.)
Location <PRV> VL 403 {Geekhaus} - East Village
There's blood in the air, here, but the pain is barely even registering; minds alive with a vibrant dance of fear and adrenaline, rage and hate and slurs spat through broken teeth. A motorcycle half-embedded in the ground. A black jacket with a bold white cross. Length of piping embedded through a shoulder. Length of piping embedded through a wall. "Fucking mutie scum --" (Somewhere behind, a gunshot blasting --) Flat-freckled face contorted with disgust. Contorted with pain. (-- somewhere in front of him, the bullet --) The barrel of a gun now stuck neatly through a hand. At speed everything comes in still-frame, or near enough. A blessing and a curse. Think any slower and he's in a wall -- but he'd wanted distraction , wanted something to stop his mind spinning out over two worlds' worth of nightmares and instead -- A glint of knife in his peripheral vision -- a knife vanished into the toe of a boot. -- instead DJ is bored, and spinning harder. At least Riverdale will sleep easier, tonight. In the distance, a flash of red and blue. Some of the remaining white-crosses scrambling. Something in him perks, at this. Almost eager. DJ might not have succeeded in finding distraction, but distraction is finding him. The first hints aren't in his mind but around him -- a reverse-dopplering of the approaching sirens, deciding this conflict isn't worth their time and turning away; the remaining Purifiers all dropping their weapons as one and, where they're physically still able turning (in unison!) to flee. Only after this, the familiar questing mind, fluttering a ghost-light touch up against his. The roots that pull down into DJ's mind, push in, press themselves deep, are already wide-wide-wide around them, an ocean of thoughts and identities that turns him into them all at once. << Please, >> surfaces kind of dismissively, << like these clowns were gonna give us a fight. >> DJ's mind is straining outward even before he feels that first brush of touch up against his, stretching in a desperate and keening flutter of its own. It folds itself around Hive's touch -- not grateful but somehow both relieved and furious all at once; the world is splitting back into flashes of (un)familiar streets as he traces a path along this connection, now, unerringly toward the pull of home. The miles have fallen away swiftly -- it's not much time at all before he's there, blinking into Hive's apartment in a storm of grief and fury. He's barely dinged up from his tussle with the Purifiers, bruised knuckles and a small scrape along one arm. The chaotic jangle of his mind clashes hard against the steady roots of Hive's, all a disarray where they mesh. "Will you give one, then?" The demand is undergirded with a tumble of upset: << how dare you -->> running over the feeling of being yanked from his home into this world, the contrast between this (solid, rooted, home) and the rootless-isolation he's felt this past year. "I didn't bring you here to fight you." Hive had been playing video games, but Ratchet & Clank is paused on the screen with the titular Lombax poised to dive into a glowing yellow portal. "You really want to go back and tussle with the pigs, be my guest." He sounds, mentally, far less cavalier about this than his words would suggest; sickened mental imagery of DJ facing off with some Sentinels, shot full of holes, bleeding out on the sidewalk, run through their mind. His steadying presence only roots itself deeper, stronger, even as the rest of their minds start peeling away like so much chaff, the bulk of them falling down and down to something sleeker and quieter. "Then why did you bring me here?" DJ hisses back, sharp, and he's not talking about the apartment, not talking about the fight with the Purifiers.. Once again there's the jarring feeling of being pulled from one world to another. The yawning emptiness that followed. << (why did you bring me here) >> echoes in their mind << (and then abandon me?) >> << I didn't mean to >> DJ can hear before Hive manages to quash it, before the rest of the thought derails the defensiveness into -- -- it's not guilt, not really, but it hits hard and sudden and takes both their breath away, the force of the sudden realization. What happened first might have been an accident, unrealized, unavoidable, but the year that followed -- He doesn't shy from the emptiness, pulls it in. Sits with it, as he tries on different answers: << we didn't know >> << we didn't think you'd want to be here >> << we were hurting >> and discards them each as inadequate. "I was scared," is honest, at last. "You're too much like him, and what we were --" Hive's head shakes. "I wasn't ready for that." DJ drops heavily onto the sofa beside Hive, exhaling all in a rush. Memories of his own Hive are surfacing, sharp and acerbic, warm and steady. Too much like the man beside him. "I'm not trying to replace him. I don't want to be him." << (you can't be the same) >> << (we can't be the same) >> << can't be what we were >> is a short hop to << what were we >> / << what are we >>, the many ways he's felt (and lost) family, the question of eternal families and if they've been truly lost. His eyes fix on the frozen television screen as he tries and fails to push Polaris's mental voice from their mind, << (Where do we go from here?) >> Hive's exhale comes at the same time as DJ's, his following inhale shakier. He reaches out, drapes a bony arm around the other man's shoulders. The mental paring-down is just about complete, now, other minds shed from his tangle to leave it just them, quiet and alone, here. << Then we don't try to be. >> He squeezes gently at DJ's shoulder, pulling the other man to his side. << (can't be what we were) / (can be something new) >> DJ melts in against Hive's side, some part of the frantic racing of his mind easing at the touch. Some other part of it spiking harder, the same kind of keening ache that the mental reach had met with earlier. His thoughts don't come in any semblance of words, any more -- just a quickened pulse of desire, a hard knot of grief bound up in it. A relief that answers Hive's thought gratefully. His head tips back, at first brush tentative but then firmer when his lips find Hive's. Hive's eyes open wide-wide, a startled beat fluttering through them both and then melting away with that pulse of desire. He's meeting the kiss almost before he consciously knows what is happening, his arm tighter around DJ for a beat as he presses back hungrily. When his mind catches up with this he breaks off -- doesn't quite pull away, his forehead resting against DJ's; to the chaotic rhythm of the other man's thoughts is added another heady and confused strand. << Oh god, this -- What are we doing? >> A brief shimmer of motion brings them into the bedroom. DJ closes the door with Hive's weight pressed up against it, his body leaned up hard into the other. That pulse of desire hasn't faded, only growing when he feels its brief echo in Hive. His next kiss is deeper, something in it like plunging into the deep and taking a gulp of fresh air all at once. << (something new.) >>