Logs:Watchful Waiting
| Watchful Waiting | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia | 2025-05-12 "... 'least until shit goes even more downhill." |
| Location
<NYC> La Suite Lunaire, Le Bonne Entente - Astoria, Queens | |
This luxurious suite spans the fourth and fifth floors at the tip of the building's north wing. Silver-veined black marble columns, arches, counters, and accents make a striking backdrop for the plush red velvet furnishings and chrome appliances. The first floor has a partially open floor plan that favors half-walls and glass where divisions are necessary. The entryway opens onto the expansive living room which meanders in one direction into the chef's kitchen and the dining room in another, rejoining beyond these in a solarium spanning both floors. On one side, a spiral stair winds up around a cylindrical glass elevator, and on the other side is a lush greenhouse with a waterfall that cascades down from the second floor. Beyond the double glass doors, a garden terrace affords an unobstructed view of the park, the river, and the Manhattan skyline beyond framed by the bridges. The second level is more conventionally laid out, beyond the glass balcony of the solarium. The sumptuous master suite offers a range of comfortable multi-purpose furniture besides the massive bed, and adjoins a rambling spa bathroom with an immense soaking tub, a claw-foot tub in its own vine-wreathed nook, a huge rainwater shower, and both dry and wet saunas. There is also an office with state-of-the-art video conferencing hardware, a reading room that could almost qualify as a library, and an entire second bedroom suite. The floor-to-second-story glass wall of the apartment isn't letting in much sun today, but the plink of raindrops, sometimes soft and something loud, has its own charm. It's not so much lost in the sound of the waterfall so much as adding another dimension to its soft background susurrus. Matt is draped kind of diagonally on the couch, with a big bowl of snacks that look like tortilla chips but taste like kettle corn in his lap. He's wearing a pale pink dress shirt, collar and french cuffs rakishly undone, slate gray vest and trousers. "This isn't nearly as surreal as Fantasmas and yet, somehow." He sweeps a hand at the screen, as if the image of Julio Torres surrounded by large paintings of eggs speaks for itself. "I still feel like it conveys the experience of stumbling into an avant garde art installation." "Jax is in love with that show and if it shares this sensibility I can see why. I keep meaning to watch it but --" Ryan is less diagonal and more just sprawled, long and languid across the rest of the couch and half-tucked into Matt's lap. He's draped his blazer over the back of the sofa, leaving him in a button-down in a soft, lustrous fabric that shifts from red to pink to violet depending on the angle of the light, and black wide-leg jeans that easily accommodate his rainbow oilslick braces. "I definitely would have wanted a well when I was a little kid and I think I also would have wanted all his toys." Thump THUMP thump. The knocking at the door is sharp and insistent. Whoever is outside tries the handle next, followed immediately by another -- softer -- thump. Only after this does the actual bell ring; with its soft chime the camera also activates; outside, Hive (in pajama pants and his blue-splashed-hedgehog tee) has thumped his forehead down against the door and lifted his hand as if to knock again. He kind of gives up on it, though, just patting the door halfheartedly before he tries instead: "C'mon, fucker, open the fuck up." "Oh, yes, this is very much his brand. Only Fantasmas is gayer and more dreamlike." Matt's joy here is not uncomplicated, but the longing that complicates it is familiar and quiet. "Alas that your childhood was so un-well. But you did grow up to have a wildly passionate and successful creative life nevertheless." Aching affection and fierce pride in equal parts, this. He sits up a little straighter at the knock, his brows already furrowing with concern that pulls tighter when he sees Hive, but makes no move to dislodge Ryan. Instead, he picks up the remote and pauses the movie on a dark and glitchy image of the personification of Craigslist. "If it were colored just a little brighter it could be like one of his --" The chime of the door interrupts Ryan. He twists around, snorting in a quiet amusement when he sees Hive outside. He's batting kind of halfheartedly at the wall console but then gives up on this. "Computer," is almost certainly unnecessary but maybe just hard to resist. "-- open the door." Hive shoves the door open with a shoulder once it has opened. His entrance is more of a controlled fall -- he hasn't stopped leaning against the door and kind of tumbles inside, catching himself with a hand on the doorknob before he can actually hit the floor. He's grimacing the moment he is inside, shuffling in socked feet to trudge to the couch. He leans against it, tipping his cane over the back of the couch to poke Ryan in the arm. "You're not Jax." His glower turns on Matt next, as if Matt is somehow responsible for this lack. Addressing the smart entry system as "computer" may be unnecessary, but it makes Matt smile, too. Until he winces at Hive's near-spill, teeth clenching -- possibly in an effort to hold back outright laughter. At Hive's glare Matt touches his fingertips to his chest with exaggerated affront. "Darling, Jax does have a phone," he says lightly, a chaotic tumble of affection, worry, and irritation. "What do you need? Come, sit. Have a triangular kettle corn." He holds out the bowl. "Do you know what time it is?" Ryan definitely does not know what time it is; he's fumbling to check his phone immediately after he's asked and feeling slightly vindicated that his own first guess was only a couple hours off. "You know Jax has a job, right?" "Fuck does he need a job for, you have money." Hive bends himself further over the back of the couch so that he can grab a couple of the corn chips. He straightens, then, trudging around to drop himself heavily into an armchair. There's a heavy irritation in his own voice, kind of exasperated, kind of worried. "I assume you both got like, five different federal agencies listening to your phone at all times." "He doesn't need the jobs." Matt's words are mild but prickle oddly in Ryan's ears with muted love and grief and -- maybe he's just feeling particularly irritable. His thoughts are not very much more eloquent on the matter, fleeting wisps of brightness and darkness -- both Jax -- sweeping across the surface of his mind and resolve into wordless frustrated fretting that also bleeds through to, "The jobs need him." There's a reflexive clench of hypervigilance at the telling non-explanation. Instead of checking their surroundings, he's riffling through likely reasons Hive might want to speak to Jax securely -- important, but not so urgent that he would risk further brain damage to do it via telepathy. It lands, somewhat uncertain, on the brush of sharp-soft wings, followed fast by a gust of rage and terror that cut sharp through his words, as well. "Presumably, and a bonus UN agency to boot." << Do you want them turned off? >> Ryan pushes himself upright -- a little ungainly, levering himself against Matt's shoulder for balance before he reaches down to swing his legs with a clunk to the floor. He frowns over at Hive; across the surface of his mind there's a spike of anxiety. He's trying not to dwell on it though several fretful speculations (shaped mostly like the various X-Kids who were intermittently flitting around the home) start to take shape before he quashes them. "Security ain't what it used to be." The batwinged silhouette he's refusing to think of is, nevertheless, glaringly clear in the negative space left in his mind. "What's up?" "Y'know what," Hive is deciding with an abrupt bitterness, "if SHIELD or any of them want to get off their ass and do something, maybe they should." He's giving the triangle-shaped popcorn wedges a suspicious look, and hesitates before crunching into the first one. It's hard to tell from his small blink whether he has judged it good or bad; in his voice there's only additional irritation. "Polaris's been kidnapped, you hear about this shit?" Matt leans gently into Ryan's push and does not pull away entirely when the other man has settled into an upright position. He's suddenly thinking of Nick Fury glaring performatively at the Lassiter raid team he'd somehow talked Prometheus into handing over. But that leads him right back to -- this time he pushes the thought of Dusk down, his mind growing deliberately hazy to spare Hive. Somewhere in that mist now is the rippling brightness of Polaris, the emotions drawn up with her more distant if not quite wholly detached. It's still another breath before he speaks aloud, his anger banked, no surprise evident. "Only in broad strokes. I heard Genoshan Enforcers were after her." He offers the bowl to Ryan somewhat reflexively. "I'm sorry, darling." "Kidnapped? When -- wha -- who --" Ryan's surprise is bright and furious, rippling out in his voice and translating almost immediately into an assessment whose contrastingly disciplined structure might be startling to anyone who hadn't been on his team all these years. The various members of the raid team, each with their own particular melody muted but not forgotten in this strange pause, are shivering back into very prominent awareness as he starts to weave their strengths and weaknesses and availabilities into something like harmony. (It takes a thought and a grief, with each missingdeadinvalid he has to remember to remove from the symphony.) But Genoshans pulls him up short, and the nascent song quiets as his brows knit. He slumps back against the cushions, and drags his palm down his scruffy cheek. He's starting to evaluate whether they can break someone back out of Genosha -- whether they should break someone back out of Genosha -- and though he has not entirely settled on "no", his melody now revolves very heavily around one crackling livewire of a frenetic tune. The surprise now fades into a tired acceptance. "Right. What the fuck." Hive crunches his next chip joylessly, and slouches forward with his elbows on his knees. "Ngh," is his answer. "We're not going to fucking Genosha. They don't want to kill her, they want to fucking bargain with her. Bet she'll have a luxe plastic prison over there." His eyes narrow. When he leans over to take the next chip he seems oddly sullen about it, like he has not wanted to like them but is doing it grudgingly all the same. "... 'least until shit goes even more downhill." Matt sucks in a shallow breath when Ryan's fury passes through him, his own flaring back up before fading back down into the cool chaff blanketing the surface of his mind. "I doubt the feds would have intervened even if they knew, and they certainly won't do anything now. And Magneto..." His disdain is palpable, even if his anger is still dull and muted. He slowly crunches a chip, brows furrowing as he turns over the sense of Erik Lensherr, scrupulously avoiding their first and most intimate encounter. "Frankly, she's probably safer if he does nothing. In the unlikely event he accedes, they will have little incentive to keep her alive and...unaltered." Ryan plucks another chip from the bowl and drops his head back with a soft whumph against the couch as he eats it. His mental image of jail is unwinding itself from Promethean austerity to Jax's cushy SHIELD cell to an even more luxe plastic penthouse that, almost immediately, is retrofitting itself with Prometheus-eque experimentation tables. He pushes this aside, trying not to speculate too hard on what Genoshan enslavement proecedure is mechanically like. "You want a drink?" he says, instead, grabbing his crutches from the side of the couch to help pull himself properly back up. "This movie's a fucking trip." Hive is still slouched forward; when he peeks over at Ryan it's through the loose splay of his knobbly fingers. He blows out a hard breath. "Make mine strong." | |
