ArchivedLogs:Vivat. Crescat. Floreat.

Vivat. Crescat. Floreat.
Dramatis Personae Jim, Shane
In Absentia	27 January, 2013 Late one night...
Location Central Park North
Central Park North is slightly quieter than its southern counterpart, being further uptown and slightly out of the bustle of the City - insofar as one can escape the bustle of the City even here, in the acres of green and blue that make up Central Park. The reservoir is in the northern half, providing miles of jogging and biking trails along the clear water, as well as benches for people to sit and rest. The night has a bitter cutting chill, driving the usual park rats to warmer haunts in these late hours. The reservoir is broken up ice, the stars for this brief moment are searing white, and two men sit on a bench, speaking in low voices. Both are bundled against the cold, though one in a well tailored wool coat, the other in patched corduroy, fortified by a scratchy sweater beneath, and they converse through grimaces against the the nip, their breath streaming in white plumes. "-you're the best," Jim is one such voice, his grimace partly also a grin, as he hands over a manilla envelope to the better dressed man, who looks more put upon than pleased to hand him a /white/ envelope in turn - Jim riffles through its contents with a brisk flicking of thumb, and the two shake hands. The well dressed man takes his leave, and Jim takes up the bench for himself, draping one arm over the bench back and fitting a cigarette into his mouth. Some of that broken up ice is shifting a good deal /faster/ than the others, pushed aside by something moving too /much/ and too /large/ -- hopefully! -- to be a fish. A dark shape /shoves/ some of the ice aside, slipping out of the water behind a clump of bushes. The bushes rustle. Rustle some more. Shane is dressed again when he emerges, though beads of water that might soon be ice still cling to his spiky-hard hair. He has a towel with which he is drying his face, and a coat slung over his arm; in the pools of shadow between lamplight he is darker than usual, though even as he approaches the light near the bench he is rather dark, the blue of his skin nearly black, tonight. His gills are still flexing, slowly, and he stretches his head one side to the other before presumptuously DUMPING himself onto the bench beside Jim. "Fucking cold," he greets. "/Jesus/," Jim pulls back his arm when freezing wet /teenager/ plops down next to him, though seemingly mostly to preserve the ember of his cigarette. In the privacy and the cold, his own skin has begun to grow darker and rougher as well, a few twigs snarling amongst his knuckles and ears - his face is still relatively fleshy as he throws an /appalled/ up and down scan of the kid, "Shane? Yeah, s'gotta be, your brother'd still be in the /bushes/. The fuck." This sounds like a genuine question! The fuck... have you been up to, maybe. He nearly is twitching up one side of his mouth. "'Bastian's still in the water." Shane kicks a foot towards the reservoir. "I'm more a wimp than he is, shit. S'fucking /cold/ in there. He'd stay all night if he didn't have class in the morning." When Jim pulls back his arm, Shane reaches /towards/ it. Or towards the cigarette, anyway, with graspy icy fish-hands. "The fuck with /you/." He turns this question right BACK. "Oh ho ho, you're a /funny/ guy, fishface," Jim transfers his cigarette to his UN-SHANE'd hand and promptly sticks it back in his mouth, warding the teen off with an elbow, "I only got two of these lift. That makes them worth their weight in /gold/. Mother of god, how old are you anyway." He has perfected the art of inhaling and exhaling without needing to remove the butt from his mouth; it involved one eye closing against the smoke drifting up from the cherry, and exhaling through the opposite side of the mouth. "Come on, dude, it's like seven fucking degrees out here." Which means cigarette time? Shane slumps back against the bench, tucking his knees up towards his chest. "Not old enough to buy my own smokes," he grumbles. His gills are flicking faster. "Had any good bullets lately?" "Crazy thing? I've hit a /dry/ spell. Y'know they put an /age/ limit on these things for a reason. Eat -- candy, or something." When Shane stops trying to steal his Valuable Smoke, Jim drapes his arm on the backrest again, one eye squinting pensively at the increasing flicker of gills, "Y'alright?" "What reason? Age limit's for people without healing factors. I laugh in the face of cancer, man, /trust/ me they've tried to cancer me up. Doesn't take." Shane's fingers are opening and closing as if still grasping, though now they just sit on his knee and do not reach for Cigarette. "Sure, whatever. Be alrighter if you shared. The fuck are you doing out here this hour of night?" "Yeahwell, all the more reason," Jim /grimaces/ and shrugs out of his coat - his thick bark-skin has spread to cover further, making the pale blue of his eyes a little jarring, "I ain't /them/, am I." He drops his coat around Shane's shoulders, not seeming concerned with the cold much, each exhale between smoke just as warm and steamy. "Was meetin' a guy. He had a thing for me. Doesn't look all that good for folk to be seen talking to parasites like me in broad daylight." "No," Shane grouses, "/they'd/ let me have cigarettes." He frowns. "OK, probably not. Mngh. What the fuck." His shoulders stiffen as Jim's coat drapes over them -- he's put his OWN blanket-style over his legs, though he has a few layers of sweaters-and-sweatshirts on anyway -- and fidgets uncomfortably under the new drape of fabric. Doesn't shrug it OFF, though. "He had a thing for you." This is dry. Shane's head turns, dark eyes skipping over Jim. "Yeah. Man. Grizzled old dude. Paunch. Bark. I can see /why/." "Oh yeah." Jim holds up his envelope and taps it against the side of his jaw, "A /cashy/ kinda thing. The best kinda thing. I'm buyin' a new hat t'morrow, no joke." When Shane's eyes rove to scan him, Jim's preoccupied with patting the paunch, looking down at it, "hey, don't knock it, kid, that's my emergency reserves. Primo /body/ fat, made by yours truly. This took dedication." His eyes raise up, plucking his cigarette from his mouth to squint out at the reservoir, "How far out d'you guys go?" "Yeah? What'd you do for /him/? What kind of hat? You need, like. Pimphat. Something with some glitz to it." Shane looks a little wryly at Jim's paunch, and he allows, "be nice to have some, sometimes. I can't store it if I /try/, not till I'm in there --" He waves a hand to the icy water, "for a /while/. -- far out?" /This/ draws Shane's teeth out, flashing in a /large/ grin. "Dude. That thing's like a mile and a half," he says, amused. "My brother can cover its length and /back/ in six minutes if he's /not/ hurrying. We want to go far out, we hit the harbor. You swim?" "I took some nice pictures for his family," Jim grimaces to himself, running his none-cigarette-hand over his hair - it's hard to tell if it could stand a wash, or if the crinkly-crunchy texture is just leafiness, "Don't think glitz really matches my /style/. I'll leave that t'your /dad/." Oo, sickburn. Except that it's true. He makes a defeated /snort/, "Swim? I mean, I know /how/, but nothin' against that. You hear this kid - he can't grow a /paunch/, and I can't swim the fucking /reservoir/. You're real proud of your brother, huh?" He checks his default snark-taunt in saying this, Squinting at Shane with his smoke stuck out of his pursed mouth like one more branch. "Do you have a style?" Shane asks this ohsoskeptically, reaching out a hand to PLUCK at a ribbing of corduroy. "I bet you could swim the reservoir with practice. Just like I could grow a paunch if I stayed in it all winter. But c'mon. Would we be having any fun?" He grins again. "I mean maybe. Swimming's fun. So is gorging on fish." The grin fades, though, as he looks back out towards the ice-chunky water. He fidgets, shrugging twitchily. "He's --" His teeth clamp down, and he shrugs again. "You're really not gonna share that fucking cig?" "He's--?" Jim has plucked the cigarette from his mouth, is not /actively/ smoking it, but is holding it on the far side of him from Shane. His eyes directed out at the water. When he holds still, he looks like a plant that was sculpted to grow that way. With a cigarette. "My brother," Shane grumbles, slumping down to nestle himself DEEPER into Jim's coat. Which is ridiculously too big for him. He kind of wears it like a blanket, too. "Look, he's been through a lot." He might sound kind of /defensive/ on this point. "Yeah, it sounds like." Jim exhales, and the tree bough bends, handing over the cigarette, "Shit, kid." His eyes don't leave the water, "So what's he doin'." "Swimming." Shane is terse. He takes a /long/ drag of cigarette. The fluttering of his gills slows. He offers the cigarette back, and his eyes don't leave the water, either. "Hey, go easy," Jim frowns, eyes swiveling Shane-wards, "You're gonna make yourself sick." "Thanks, Dad." Shane curls an arm around his knees, dropping his chin to rest on them. "We don't sick easy. Hey, can trees get cancer?" "Who knows," Jim says dismissively, reaching out to take is cigarette back, "M'not your dad. I'd be a horrible dad. I don't care if you /get/ sick, I'm already a shit giving you a shot at trying." "Couldn't be any more horrible than my dad," Shane says with a shrug. "Maybe you should chain-smoke a whole box. For science. You're not a shit. I mean maybe you're a shit. There's a crapton shitti/er/ people, though. Does snooping pay good?" "/Or/," Jim suggests absently, fitting cigarette back into homebase - his face, "I could /not/ do that. Snooping's only good pay if you're /good/ at snooping. And being good means you know when /not/ to." He's looking at the teen from the corner of his eye for a long moment, his scruffy face set hard even /before/ it coated itself in treebark and faint foliage. "So. Swimming." Longer pause. "You two get in a fight or something?" "Are you good at snooping?" Shane's gills flare out again, wide and fluttering. "Shit, man, when /don't/ you snoop. Jeez. We don't fight." Under the jacket his shoulders are still set tense. "We. Sometimes disagree." There's a pause. "With teeth." Jim's eyes dip to the flare of gills - but only just briefly, before heading back out at the water again. The bench faces the water. Anything /but/ looking at the water will put a kink in your neck. He pulls in a deep last drag of his cigarette, "Mmh. Then it's everybody outta the pool, huh?" He flicks the cigarette at the icy bank. "Better in the reservoir than way out in the ocean," Shane says, with a quick toothy smile turned out towards the icy water. "Blood out there attracts sharks." Jim isn't smiling. He just asks against the night, bluntly, "Y'okay?" Shane's gills flutter again. Faster. He is turning his head, though, giving Jim a Look. It is a look like, thefuck? Which he then voices: "Thefuck." It comes with a /snort/, for emphasis. "S'it the plants? Make you all soft and caring? That's bad for a New Yorker, you know. You gotta practice your not giving a shit. That's why you get mugged, you know." Jim doesn't seem to have heard any of this, one foot bobbing idly. Eventually, "...so?" Shane's eyes fix steadily on the reservoir. His inner eyelids have closed, largely clear though just enough not-so to give his eyes a somewhat glassy look. "You ever just want to be a plant?" he wonders. "Like. For good. What's it like"? Though Jim's eyelids don't close, they do sag as he exhales - a long hard push of air through his nose. "It's real fucking... simple. Like sleeping, but awake. I lost, uh." His jaw grinds, "Three or four months of my life to it, once. Just put down deep roots, closed my eyes and it was all down to just..." His fingers drum on the park bench, "Dirt. Sun. Water. 'Vivat, crescat, floreat' -- live, grow and flourish. It's on a whole different timeline, between a whole different set of priorities. Took me a couple weeks between thinking 'I should get up' and actually... doing it." His eyes leave the water, and raise to the stars above, "I dunno, kid. I'm not a plant. Not a lot of /curiosity/ amongst the green things." "Live, grow, flourish. Isn't that what everyone's trying to do?" Shane's chin digs in against his knees as he talks. His fingers curl in there, too, claws prickling through the fabric of the jacket that blankets his legs. The larger one over his shoulders is almost swallowing him. "Three or four months is a long-ass time. What, uh, happened to your life? People usually want rent and shit." "S'what we should all be /trying/ to do," Jim says with a very /frank/ glance at Shane before looking back upwards. He crooks a gritted grin stars-ward, "They do! My life was a fucking mess! I'm still kinda trying to piece it back together. Quit drinking." "Hhhh." It's not really a laugh, it doesn't get any farther than that breath. Shane's lips curl upwards, gaze still unblinky-focused on the water. "How's that going. I mean dude. I met you in the back of a squad car and then bleeding on my fucking living room floor I think your life /is/ a fucking mess, no past tense needed." "Nah," Jim contends casually, slouching /plantily/ in his seat, "Just /eventful/. What, you think I /want/ a dull-ass nine to five job and a house in the suburbs? Get bent." "Sure, yeah. Suburbs have a lot more space to plant trees." Shane slouches, too. Almost in time with Jim. He doesn't look very planty at it, though. "There's events that don't involve getting shot. What /do/ you want?" "I want," Jim nods slowly to himself, poking his tongue thoughtfully into the inside of his cheek, "to take some really rad pictures." "Of?" Shane's head turns, slightly. Just a little, sideways towards Jim. "Fuck!" Jim's hands open yet - like why-you-hassling-me, though he laughs as well, if slightly self-consciously, "I dunno yet, kid!" Shane chuffs, quiet. "Jeez. But you're, like, grey. Shouldn't you have figured this shit /out/ by now?" "Uh, no? Duh." Jim does a really obnoxious Valley-Girl sarcastic head bob when he says 'duh'. "Who the fuck told you /that/?" "The movies," Shane replies, promptly. "Grey hair means sage wisdom. C'/mon/." "/God/, I hate movies." Jim leans forward to grab an icicle off the bottom of the bench, hucking it at the ice for lack of /other/ obstacles, and then he reaches into his inner coat to pull out his crinkled and mostly empty box of cigarettes. "Fact is, shit's fucked up. Anyone tries telling you it's not is full of it. It's ugly and stupid and complicated and weird." He pulls out his last two cigarettes, cramming one in his mouth and handing the other to Shane, "That's why we /gotta/ do it. Fuck, I'm taking pictures because you can't make this shit up." His lighter is almost out of fluid, and he has to flick it three or four times to get a pittance of flame out of it. "You and me and all this other crap - this is /real/. It doesn't get any /realer/ than this." He hands his lighter over to Shane, and scruffles his stiff hair with a gnarly hand, "So fuck it. Gimme my jacket later, huh? You've gone all dark." "Shit's fucked up." Shane can agree with that. He pulls his hand out from inside the jacket to flick the ligher, once, twice, on the third time he lights it and his cigarette as well. "Gotta do it because it's fucked up. You sound like a masochist." And yet he's smiling, around the cigarette, his shoulders relaxing slightly. He puffs. Slowly. And watches the water as smoke curls up around his face.