ArchivedLogs:Our Lives

Our Lives
Dramatis Personae Flicker, Hive	2014-12-15 Part of Future Past. Immediately follows strange dreamsand immediately precedes Jim's arrival.
Location <NYC> The Unicomplex - Harbor Commons - Lower East Side
Flicker and Hive split the basement in this apartment; coming down the stairs emerges into an open expanse of shared space, with a pair of desks on opposite walls and large cabinets holding an enormous library of board and card games. The bookshelves here are packed predominantly with sci-fi and fantasy as well as a mass of roleplaying sourcebooks. The walls are eclectically decorated. A replica of Arya Stark's Needle, a few bright-colored but anachronistically somewhat morbid paintings of Jax's, a Mega Man X poster, a stained-glass suncatcher hung in the window and a collage of feathers framed on one wall. Up near the ceiling there's a large square hanging frame strung with netting -- a nearly ceiling-wide sort of hammock though it's hard to immediately discern how to access it. A side door leads to the bathroom, small but neat in pale stone tile. Towards the back there are walls dividing off the actual sleeping areas, tiny-cosy rooms mostly only large enough for the bed-dresser-closet combinations they contain. It's generally easy to figure out which one of the bedrooms is Hive's from the large amount of /clutter/ contrasting Flicker's perpetually tidy space. Flicker's full bed can be folded up into a recess in the wall, while Hive's larger queen hangs from the ceiling by sturdy black chains. Throughout the house -- throughout the Commons -- something flares, bright-hot-painful. Searing. Then dark. In the dark still quiet of Hive's bedroom there's a sharp gasp. Raw and ragged. Then quiet. Hive's eyes have snapped open, his fingers clutching tight at his bedsheets. He stares, sightless in the lightless room, up towards his ceiling. A pulse of psionic touch stretches outward, seeking-grasping-reaching, then just as soon coils back in. The grasping finds warmth to hold. Disquieted warmth. Unsettled, un/happy/, but it's there, firming up into a solid stable core for Hive to wrap himself /around/, should he care to. Then physical presence instead of psionic -- a flutter, a shift, and in the dark there's another presence whumping down into bed beside Hive. Flicker pushes blankets aside, shivering badly and not from cold. Tucks himself in beside Hive, arm curling tight around the telepath's shoulders. In his mind, sewers, a haggard olive-skinned face, a searing burst of explosion. A world ending, a world beginning. Hive, sallower, /older/. Older, older, older. Older. His face is pressing to bony shoulderblades, his fingers squeezing in at thin-thin-thin arm. So much /more/ to this dream, for sure. Right now, all his mind jangles with is this. His hand spreads out against Hive's chest, feeling the heart beating beneath his fingers. Hive just shakes his head. Shakes it, hard, harder, harder. He lifts his hand, curling his fingers over Flicker's, pressing the other man's hand over his heart. After a few moments he turns, abrupt, curling in against Flicker. His face presses to his friend's chest, his breath coming in short ragged sobs, hot tears spilling down his cheeks. The shaking of his thin shoulders doesn't show any sign of stopping for quite some while. Flicker's cheek presses to the top of Hive's hair. His fingers trace down the back of Hive's neck, run slowly against his back, rubbing small circles between bony shoulderblades. He doesn't show any signs of letting go. Just holds Hive close as tears soak into the plain white fabric of his undershirt. There's a churn of thoughts somewhere below the surface of his mind but he's carefully, consciously pressing them down, wiping them steadily calmer beneath slow breathing and a soft litany of prayer. For strength, mostly, that he doesn't feel he has. But -- "... You don't," the words come out slow and deliberate, and even with his careful mindframe he can't disguise how difficult it is to /get/ them out, "have to do it." Gradually, slowly, the sobs quiet into just small hitches of breath. Hive sags in against Flicker, cheek pressing to dampened shirt. Images start to drift back, in answer. The scarred skeletal husk of the Bronx. The hulking robots clanging their way through. Tola's browning too-skinny body. Micah's scarred skin and bladed legs. Skinny children huddled working out math in the snow. Razor wire against slate-grey sky. "... I've been watching," he whispers, mumbled low against Flicker's chest. Fire sears up, lancing white-hot through both their minds. Crackling familiar school walls to rubble. "And if --" "You /don't/," Flicker says again, sharper, this time, fingers clenching down against Hive's back. Fisting into loose skin, kneading at what should be muscle, "have to do it. They're dreams. There's other people. Other ways. It doesn't have to be you." Something else echoes into Flicker's mind. Another fragment-memory, another dream. An old man, grey-haired, black trilby, white beard, sipping tea across from him. "You are crucial to this, young man. If that happened -- if we lost you -- it wouldn't matter. We can't win this war." Hive pushes it aside, relaxes, for a moment, into the kneading. A fresh round of tears is slipping down his cheeks. "Maybe. But we seem to think it does. Have to --" Fire is flaring up again. Smoke and ash, burning. His shoulders shudder. "It's everyone. This isn't a -- a fucking lab this time, man, it's not. This is /everyone/. Not just our families. The -- the. School, the -- city, the -- fucking." He hesitates before testing out, with an absurd breath of laughter, "/World/." Short, disbelieving. "Like fuck I don't have to --" His face presses up against Flicker's sodden shirt again. The same disbelief is echoed through Flicker's mind -- a distance, a noncomprehension. The world, nope. It's a scale he's not really grasping. He tries to pull it back: The country? Still not really there. The entirety of New York? Even this he's a little bit lost on, but once he's pulled it down to the /state/, at least the scale starts to feel immense: okay, alright, we have to save New York. "... you were drinking tea with Magneto." His brows hike up. A faint smile touches his lips. He tips his head down, burying the smile against Hive's hair; it fades again soon, anyway. His fingers keep kneading at the other man's back. "You don't. Have to." His mind is swirling once more as his head presses to Hive's. Hand pressing flat, now, to his friend's back, a swallow pushed hard down his throat. His other side twitches, a phantom-tug of motion that goes nowhere, no arm currently attached. << ... would've given my /other/ arm, yesterday, to find something that would make you want to keep living. /Want/ to keep living. /Want/ to keep living. For /you/. Not for every other person on the planet except you. >> A quiet background contemplation. Aloud: "No. This is you. Your life." "Yeah." The smile is echoed, just as brief, just as faint, on Hive's face. There's a long stretch of silence that follows this. His mind twines outward, wrapping tightly around, over, /through/, coiling-squeezing-holding. Pulling Flicker's in towards himself firm and tight. His hand lifts, fingertips brushing down against the scars that etch the other man's face, drawing down to press against empty shirtsleeve and push, unsteady and trembling, to the truncated flesh where an arm once was. "Was dumb to try and pretend. These haven't been our lives in a long time." His hand stays in place for a moment longer before he reaches for his nightstand, picking his phone off it to scroll through his contacts for Joshua's number. Flicker finally moves his arm from around Hive. Presses the switch to turn the screen back off. "... can we at least pretend till dawn?" It's clear enough in his mind it's for Hive's sake more than his own, angry, upset, wanting to just -- not. With any of this. And /let/ the other man retain some control over his own life. For once. Hive sets the phone back down, accepting this mutely and turning in towards Flicker again. He tucks his head against the other man's shoulder, eyes closing once more. Quiet, and very wry, as he pulls the blankets back up over himself: "... sweet dreams."