ArchivedLogs:Happy New Year

Happy New Year
Dramatis Personae Shane, Micah
In Absentia	31 December 2013 Probably a /little/ short on the Happy. (Takes place hours after Micah falls asleep at Lucien's.)
Location <NYC> Tessier Residence - Upstairs - Greenwich Village
The upper floor of this apartment holds the bedrooms; one master bedroom and three smaller ones. One has been converted to a lounge, couches and /more/ books and a large desk by its window. The other two smaller bedrooms upstairs, in strange departure from the rest of the house's style, seem decorated more with younger occupants in mind. One of them, styled largely in purples and blues, has a pair of twin beds with matching butterfly-patterned bedspreads and a similar fabric for the window curtains; a wealth of stuffed toys is neatly arranged on both. The other is very green, its bedspread green-and-black striped; the walls are covered with a host of movie posters. Between the two bedrooms stands a bathroom, cheerfully decorated with colourful mosaic fish in its tiles. The master bedroom, in contrast to the paler, earthy scheme outside, is warm and rich, decorated in deep reds. The exquisitely crafted furniture is dark, with reddish undertones to the mahogany wood. The king-sized bed is stocked with an overabundance of pillows, and more cushions rest in the window seat. One wall holds a spacious walk-in closet. A table, low to the ground, sits on a thick rug between the bed and the entrance, the right height for kneeling rather than chairs; the checked pattern carved into its surface marks it as a chessboard, though the pieces are not in evidence. The master bathroom adjoins the bedroom; it is large, done in black marble, with an overly spacious glass-walled shower and a similarly large jacuzzi bathtub. Creepcreep. Creep creeeeep. Shanes move quietly when they want to, and this one right now is moving Very Quietly Indeed. He slips into the darkened bedroom, unbothered by the dim light -- lit only by the pale glow of streetlamps shining down the street through the window -- as he pads softly towards the bed. He's barefoot, in jeans and a white t-shirt; the coffee smells from work have had a little time to fade, now, replaced by the winey-rich aroma of stroganoff from dinner. There's a moment where he just watches Micah sleep, before crawling into bed alongside. He burrows under the covers, butting his head lightly up against Micah's chest and snaking an arm around him. Then another bonk. And another. Like he is KNOCKING. Micah is asleep. Has been asleep. Probably will /continue/ to be asleep for some time, barring outside interference. With no more than bare minutes of sleep caught at any one time since Friday night, his body has latched quite firmly onto the quiet unconsciousness Lucien's ability gifted. As such, even with the repeated nudges, his eyes stay closed. The stimulus is enough to cause him to stir, turning toward the movement and curling in tighter. His arms wrap around the form next to him and gently tug it close, then he goes still again, breathing slowing once more. "Oh --" Shane's voice is just a quiet whisper in the quiet room, when Micah tugs him closer. His face nuzzles up into Micah's chest, fingers gently running against his back in soft-slow kneading. There's a while -- a quite /long/ while, actually -- where he just lies there, tucked in close, his ear pressed to Micah's chest to listen to the heartbeat underneath and his breathing slowly regulating itself to match the other's. Fingers kneading at Micah's back, eyes slipping closed as though he may be drifting to sleep himself. He doesn't sleep, though. A long while later his head turns, forehead bonking in against Micah's chest again. "Ba." Bonk. "Ba." Bonk, bonk. "Ba, wake up." At the resumption of bonking, Micah nuzzles in closer. It is the combination of nudges and words that finally wakes him. His eyelids flutter uncertainly like old window shades, never quite making it all the way up, and his head tilts at Shane in some confusion. At the unfamiliar bed linens with additional puzzlement. He blinks, looking at these things again, glancing around the equally unfamiliar darkened room. “Hm?” It's an eloquent sort of question. Shane's hand traces up against Micah's back with the closer nuzzling, running up his neck and against the back of his head. He presses his cheek to Micah's chest again, fingers running back down against Micah's spine. "{I'm sorry,}" he starts in Vietnamese, "to wake you you needed that I think. Only but you slept all year." He turns his head again, pressing a light kiss to Micah's sternum. "Almost. Not quite." "It's okay," Micah replies sleepily, almost on reflex. "All year? How long have...where...what?" He rubs at his eyes, blinky-peering around the room again. The kiss to bare skin finally wakes him more thoroughly, drawing attention to the fact that he's /almost/ naked. He flushes red, from the tips of his ears right down to about the point that Shane's lips touched. "Oh, ohgosh...honey...um." He scoots back just a little, bringing himself more to the centre of the bed. "All year," Shane repeats. "I don't know exactly how long. You've been out most all day, I think. You had some sleep to catch up on." Shane's hand at Micah's back slides against Micah's side with the pulling-back, and he pulls it the rest of the way away, curling his arm in against his chest instead. "What," he says first in a little confusion, and then, "I didn't want you to be alone." "Oh...all year. Right, it's New Year's. It was...ohgosh, is it almost midnight already? It was still /light out/ when I got here." Micah's expression turns a little regretful. "I'm just...tryin'. T'be as consistent as I can about the boundaries with the touchin', honey. It's okay y'woke me. I shouldn't've...stayed this long. Lucien had things t'do an'...I really didn't mean t'stay this long." He frees himself from the blankets, searching out a lamp on a bedside table to flick on in hope of better luck finding his clothes. "Almost." Shane shrinks back down beneath the blankets when Micah explains, his brows creasing unhappily. "... I can't touch you now? I didn't. But I." His gills flutter briefly. "I hug you all the time, I wasn't --" He stops here, head bowing momentarily with a meek, "... okay." His eyes scrunch immediately closed at the light, and his gills still flutter as he drags himself out from under the warm comforter to sit up, knees pulled up towards his chest. "It's just. Daiki says how you spend the New Year is -- tells -- what your year's going to -- be like and I didn't want. You to be alone." "Honey, no... You're allowed t'touch. An' hug. It's just...context. Snugglin' under the covers with next t'no clothes on with an underage boy would raise some /serious/ eyebrows, sugar, that's all. 'Specially with the kissin'." Micah winces a bit from the light, himself, but proceeds to find his folded pile of clothes and prosthesis on the far side of the bed. He pulls on the ivory henley shirt and the forest green sweater before starting the process of tugging liners onto his leg. "Thank you, honey. For wakin' me. For bein' here. It's sweet of you." "There's nobody's eyebrows here to raise. I just -- you were asleep and you /haven't/ slept and I --" Shane curls his arms around his shins, chin dropping to rest on his knees. His eyes fix on Micah as he finds his clothes, lingering long on bare skin; in other circumstances perhaps he might have had something inappropriate to say here but once the shirts are on he explains this staring with an unhappy: "You're hurt." He scoots closer to Micah, hand hovering but not touching over where there is bruising on the other man's side. His eyes lower to Micah's leg as he tugs the liners on. "-- I hardly ever see you without your leg," he suddenly realizes, hand dropping to hover instead by Micah's leg, and then fall to the mattress. "I know, sugar, it's just... How're y'ever gonna know how people are expectin' you t'behave if I don't tell y'when you're doin' things that could be misinterpreted by most folks?" Once the liners have finally been fitted up snugly, Micah attaches the prosthesis's socket. "It's just a bruise," he reports almost casually, his hand brushing against his right flank over the site of the bruise before continuing to retrieve his socks (on each of which Kermit the Frog is grinning his joyful toothless frog-grin) and pull them on. The report of rarely seeing him without the prosthesis earns a chuckle. "S'cause I need it for silly things like standin' an' walkin' around. S'usually only off any length of time for sleepin' an' showers." Collecting his jeans, he tugs these on over his feet then stands to pull them into place and fasten them. "Spence an' B downstairs, or did they go someplace else for the night?" "I know. I just." Shane's shoulders stiffen, curling inward. "Wanted to hold you I think you need hugs. /I/ need hugs. Clothes are dumb anyway. They just get in the way of breathing, I'd never wear them if we didn't have /winter/." Then after some consideration: "No, I would, I'd miss bow ties. Spence and B and Dai are all downstairs. Desi and Sera and Gae, too. Lucien went -- somewhere. Somewhere fancy, oh my /god/ you should've seen his fucking tux it it was /gorgeous/ I wanted to tear it right the hell back off him." Rather /less/ casually than Micah: "A bruise from /what/." His eyes narrow on Micah's sweater as though he can x-ray it and see the bruise beneath. The chuckle and subsequent explanation darken his cheeks in a sudden deep blush. "No I -- I mean I /know/ that I just. Sometimes I forget? Because like. /Everyone/ I know is a freak we have beaks and wings and gills and claws and /all/ this shit you don't see on /most/ people and I think my brain kind of just keeps deciding that your leg was /always/ metal that's just how Micahs come standard. I mean, I know like three different people who are metal -- genetically." His cheeks tint deeper purple-blue. "{Sorry} that's. I just. Have dumb brain sometimes I don't know why I even said any -- wait." Now he peers up at Micah curiously. "... Do you shower sitting down, then?" "It's okay, honey, /really/. I'm not upset. I didn't mean t'sound upset if I did." Once he's fully dressed, Micah circles back to Shane's side of the bed, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and squeezing tight. "I like hugs." He smiles at Shane's description of Lucien's tux, though a faint blush also dusts across his cheekbones. "I rather suspect that was the intention of its design. Or at least of its /purchase/." A waving hand gestures Shane off of the bed. "Up. I wanna tidy the covers back so Lucien doesn't come home to a messy bed." His smile falters slightly at the question. "There was a rather...weighty snowball. Just some rowdy teenagers lookin' for trouble." Shane's blush and sudden back-pedalling earn another, brighter laugh and an eager jump into the topic change. "It's fine, honey. You've only ever known me with it. An' it's kinda normal. You're s'posed t'treat a prosthesis like it's a part of the person's body because it /is/ an extension of them. Just...a removable extension." Micah shakes his head at the question of sitting for showers. "People are perfectly capable of standin' on just one at a time, y'know." With a grin, he lifts his left foot up from the floor, standing perfectly steady on just the right leg. "I could prob'ly win most competitions for one-leg balance if they just let me use the right side. An' showers have all those close walls t'lean on if y'need, besides. Guess that means y'never noticed the shower chair I had in for that week after I got shot?" Shane leans happily into the hug, relaxing at the reassurance that his father is not upset with him. His head tips forward to rest against Micah, eyes squeezing slowly shut. "Well, it worked. Maybe you'll see it when he comes home and maybe /you/ can get it back off him I mean you've already gotten into his bed once today." He doesn't get up at the urging to, instead snaking his arm around Micah, careful to avoid resting his hand where the bruise is. For a moment his teeth bare. "Mngh. This is why --" He breathes deep. "... it's been pretty shitty out there, hasn't it?" He lifts his head, getting up now and grinning at Micah's balancing. "Okay but it's /harder/ balancing in the shower there's all this /soap/ and it gets all slippy. -- I guess you're just kind of more talented there than me." He shakes his head at the question of the chair. "I hardly ever even go into you and Pa's bathroom, Spence showers quick and B never locks the door if he's showering so I don't need it much. Except when there's eleventy billion people sleeping at our place and I really have to pee. If I were you though I'd totally just take /Pa/ to shower with he's warmer than a wall for leaning against /and/ prettier when he's all wet." "Oh, goodness, y'make it sound like I tricked m'way in here. Luci practically dragged me upstairs 'cause I looked pathetic an' it prob'ly /felt/ awful when he touched me...y'know how his ability is." Micah's blush deepens, just ending up more flustered the more he tries to explain. "I'm not gonna...I already bothered 'im enough for one day, I'm sure he's not gonna want nobody /pawin'/ at 'im when he gets home." He sighs heavily at Shane's obvious upset. "Yeah. I ain't hardly been out of the house any since all this happened. That was just...between the front door an' the van, tryin' t'get here. S'why I came, though. We're losin' the battle in the media t'Malthus's video. It ain't really been /answered/ yet. Lucien an' Mirror are gonna help me with a...whole media campaign. They're gatherin' up testimonials from folks who Jax has helped, 'specially the ones who were in the labs. An' I...was s'posed t'go home an' write up a whole press release an' then film it but then I slept all day instead," he admits sheepishly. "It is harder. That's why I needed the chair when I was injured." Shane's conclusion of better ways to stay upright in the shower spikes Micah's colour even deeper red. "Well, Jax ain't always...available an' needin' t'shower at the same times I do. S'gotta busy schedule runnin' all kindsa strange hours..." Oh, what a convenient time to move pillows and straighten bedclothes! Tidying up the bed takes quite a bit of leaning /away/. "It was rough going to work," Shane admits with a somewhat too-casual shrug. "This is why I want to stay with you, though, when you have to be out there /longer/ it's not going to be safe." He just nods, perhaps approving at the mention of media campaign. "Good. Good because if I hear one more person talking about Pa being a horrible -- /mass-murdering/ terrorist /B's/ going to have to be the one holding /me/ back." He scoots around to the opposite side of the bed, tugging the sheets to help smooth them out and put them straight. "You could /make/ --" It's likely from his sharply teasing grin that this was heading straight back into territory that would make Micah blush deeper, but then his grin drops away abruptly. "... I guess he's not. Going to be available for -- /anything/ for a -- a long." His gills flutter and he focuses somewhat intently on straightening the bedsheets, blinking rapidly. He's distracted from this by a sudden sharp report outside that he /flinches/ from like gunfire until it's followed by another and another, and the bright flickering of distant fireworks shimmers in through the window. He tugs his phone out of his pocket after this, frowning at the time. "Oh -- shit." His eyes brighten here with a sudden sting of tears. "Fuck {I'm sorry} I missed it." "Oh...oh, honey." Micah straightens back up and moves closer to Shane, pulling him into another tight hug. "We're gonna get this right. On top of all that... Don't tell nobody, 'cause we want this t'just /show up/ in the media from an undisclosed source, if it works out... But we're tryin' t'see if we can locate Vector. Get 'im t'record /his/ version of events, which would exonerate Jax an' put all the blame square on Prometheus /and/ Malthus where it belongs." He stumbles a little bit in getting Malthus's name out, still. When Shane starts to stammer over the reminder of Jax being /away/, he follows him to the other side of the bed, drawing him close again. "Honey, I know. We're hopin'...maybe with Vector talkin'. That that'll be enough t'get 'im out. The preponderance of evidence in his favour. An' havin' the /truth/ on our side should...count for somethin'." The sudden loud sound makes Micah jump, too, wrapping his arms tighter around Shane and pushing him up against the bed as if to shield him. As the more telltale signs of fireworks emerge, he backs up, expression sheepish as he brings his fist to his chest to sign 'Sorry.' "Just a little jumpy lately, I guess. An' y'didn't miss anythin'. Or at least /I/ didn't. This is just where I wanted t'be." He squeezes Shane tighter again with the assurance. Shane returns the hug, fierce. "/Vector/. But he --" He swallows, and nods. "Good. He probably needs hugs." He nuzzles against Micah's shirt, turning his head at the sound of more fireworks to look towards the window. It takes some effort, but he fights back tears that -- more than likely really had nothing to do with forgetting midnight. "With you is a good way to start. If my year is full of family and hugs --" He stretches up onto his toes, pressing a soft kiss to Micah's cheek. "Happy New Year, Ba." Micah's arms wrap all the tighter around Shane at the sound of tears in his voice, and with that little kiss. “Happy New Year, hon. I love you. Let's...finish straightenin' the bed an' go down with the others.” Shane leans into the hug with a soft slow exhale. His arms tighten around Micah, as well. He nods at Micah's words, though they don't quite yet prompt him to let go, stealing -- just that much extra time wrapped up in Hug. "{Love you, too.}"