Logs:Doctor Who

Doctor Who
Dramatis Personae ???, Hive, Isra	2020-05-12 "That'll always be a part of who I've been."
Location <PRV> VL 403 {Geekhaus} - East Village
This is a small, two-bedroom apartment, the living room semi-open to the kitchen and dining area, a single bathroom situated between the doors to the bedrooms. The common areas are beautifully appointed with solid, matching handmade wooden furniture in intricate geometric mosaics. The kitchen table is ringed with coordinated but not identical chairs, two of them modular with low scooped backs, designed with winged bodies in mind. The wide, low coffee table fits neatly into the corner of a modular sectional couch, and the immense television is enthroned in an entertainment center that also houses various consoles and video games. The walls are lined with bookshelves laden with comics, roleplaying supplements, board games, speculative fiction, and a grab-bag of technical texts. The walls in between are adorned with some framed posters of classical science fiction and fantasy media along with a few pieces of gorgeous if unusual original art. It's grown late, and the coconut sweet potato curry sitting out on the stove has long since grown cold. Once, a younger, more idealistic Hive had kept the burner on low, in vain thought of Flicker coming home to a hot dinner. As the hours progressed this older (wiser? more jaded?) Hive has decided that discretion is the better part of not cementing the curry to the pot. The stove is off. The curry is cold. Hive is warm, though. He has since curled up on the couch in his baggy Theta Tau sweatshirt and jeans, a multicoloured knit blanket around his shoulders and Cat snug in his lap. He's set his laptop aside finally and is now scowling at the television screen. "Seriously? Half a second in and we're already covered in blood. Tragedy. What's next, dead par -- oh shit. There it is, dead dad. Fuck. Do they realize mutants can just have, like, families?" Perched sidewise on the couch beside Hive, Isra has one wing wrapped around herself and the other mantled loosely, the last phalanx braced against the floor. She wears a pale moss green dress, and look herself rather like spring even if the weather has been slow to match: her skin the light, young green of leaf buds not yet unfurled, with subtle variations in shade and drifts of fine golden spots that highlight rather than diminish the inhuman angles of her face and body. The horns that spiral back from her temples and the heavy talons that tip all thirty of her digits are bright, luxuriant gold, and the vast leathery membranes of her wings are the rich, velvety purple of irises in full bloom, complete with veining and variegation that evoke the real flowers, right down to flashes of startling yellow near the joints of her phalanges. "Where else will she get the requisite dose of Personal Tragedy so that humans will be able to empathize with her?" she asks dryly, her ears pressing back. << Is being a mutant in itself not edgy enough for them? >> " At the least I would rather if the writers had not laid it on so thick how just how very self-conscious they are that the main character is just another a boring white girl." Even in the clamor of city minds pressing in around them, the jangling tumult of Flicker's mind is familiar. Identifiable. It doesn't at first approach at his strobing flutter-hop pace, but the steady clip of a car pulling up to the curb, a pause outside, and then the rapid flash-blink that brings him nearer. An exhausted pall hangs over his thoughts; he's already trying to sequester the day's patients somewhere behind him, not think about tomorrow's. Focus instead on Hive waiting inside. "Ten to one they never actually say mutant anyway. A bridge too-damn-far." Hive's scowl is only growing, a small grind to his teeth. "If they just cast someone who wasn't another boring fucking white girl they wouldn't have to hang that particular lampshade. Shit, but this is --" For just a beat he stops. His mind is unfurling, too, reaching out to flex gentle tendrils out toward Flicker, weaving comfortably over and around the other man's mental space. His shoulders ease back against the couch, his jaw unclenching. "-- not shy about exposition is it? I thought I was kind of a mental sledgehammer but I got nothing on these writers." Isra snorts, the tip of her tail whipping against the side of the couch. "I might forgive the boring white girl if they'd cast a mutant, but that's certainly beyond the pale." She glances sidelong at Hive when he pauses and relaxes, her ears swiveling already in expectation. << He'll be exhausted, I'm sure. >> "I'll put the stove back on, hm? No need to pause...this." She waves a long-fingered hand at the screen before pushing herself upright by her one unfurled wing and talking on eerily smooth steps into the kitchen, stirring the curry once before turning the burner beneath it onto medium-low. << Perhaps I should leave them? If he wants to sleep... >> The reflexive shifting, softening, of Flicker's mind feels something like a sigh -- an easing of tension that comes (even without the benefit of actual fusion) in tandem with Hive's unclenching. Soon after he's blinking inside, dropping down in front of the door to shed his jacket and shoes. Nod to Isra, flash over to the couch. He's careful not to displace Cat as he drops down, curls onto a cushion to rest his head against the side of Hive's lap. "What are you watching?" "Oh now you're just talking nonsense. Mutant actors? Soon you'll be pretending like mutants could just have any old jobs. Like what next, a mutant astronomer? Mutant doctor? -- It's not good," Hive warns Flicker, shifting one hand away from Cat-scritches to trail fingers through Flicker's hair instead. "And please, he'll sleep anywhere." He stretches out one leg carefully -- not the one Flicker is lying against -- to rest a foot against the edge of the coffee table. "You should eat first, though. There's curry. It was hot. Once." Isra's answering nod to Flicker is small, just once down and back up. "Indeed. I can imagine some flatscan hitting upon the notion of a mutant doctor--with healing powers, of course. I doubt very much if they would dream up a Doctor--" The sentence completes in her mind as << --Flicker >>, but aloud she says, "--Allred." She sets the ladle aside and covers the pot. "The curry will be hot again shortly." She stops short when she looks back at the two young men on the couch in the midst of a neat and properly furnished living room. << I should stop trying to play Wendy for them; these lost boys have quite grown up. >> Even so, she adds, "Would either of you like something to drink?" "In fairness, until very recently I also couldn't have dreamed up a Doctor --" << Flicker >> also finishes for a stutter-hitch moment in Flicker's mind before he completes, "Allred." His eyes have drifted closed. "Honestly most of the mutant doctors I have known haven't been very TV-appropriate. How would you really pitch Hank? -- I guess depending on genre you could kind of. Try to, uh. Do something with Reed's whole --" Frown. Vaguely, in the back of his mind, there is a distant backdrop of shambling, low hungry groans, that do not fit at all with Dr. Galati's easygoing calm. "Thing." The stroke of fingers through his hair sends comforting ripples through his mind as well, half-formed thoughts of nothing in particular. A pot of curry cooking over a crackling campfire. The rattle-click of dice falling on hard wood. Cat's soft alert chirrup when a bird has landed on the window outside. Alanna wrestling Isra's swishing tail. There's a bit of a struggle before he cracks an eye open again. "Right. Food. Sorry, every day I think it'll lighten up but it's --" He shakes his head slightly. << Complicated. >> Like a heavy stone tossed in to disrupt the smaller shimmers; the rest of his thoughts briefly scatter and melt away. "I -- just water would be nice. Thanks." "I'd love to say I believed in you this whole time but uh. I definitely thought we'd both be dead like a year into your undergrad so --" Hive lifts a shoulder. His hand drops lower, fingers kneading absently at the base of Flicker's skull. The gentle coil of his mental presence shifts in tandem, wrapping just a little bit more snug as Flicker's thoughts ripple and scatter. "Can we say Doctor Flicker? Have you sorted that shit out yet? I'll bet it's complicated. I mean, the Rona might be fading but there's probably a backlog of all the shit people weren't getting treated in the meanwhile." He tips his head back against the couch and flashes a thin hook of smile towards Isra. "Of our own free will, too. Maybe a day later than other boys." Isra's tail lashes the air, her ears standing up a little straighter, though the actual smile on her face does not match the surge of bemusement in her. Both fade quickly at the mention of backlogged treatments, a remembered glimpse of Matt--several months ago now, pale and sickly but grinning over a chaotic game of Nuns on the Run--surfacing in her mind. She pours two glasses of water and sets them down on--real!--coasters within Hive and Flicker's reach respectively on the coffee table. "Blooming late, perhaps, but more than making up for it in style and taste." She folds her wings down comfortably around herself like a cape as she pauses to take in the current scene playing on the screen. "Or Doctor Dawson? I cannot decide if that makes you sound young and hip or like a talk show host." Then, to Hive, "Will you have some more curry, as well?" "Thank you." Flicker closes his eyes again after Isra sets the water down. His head tips forward, forehead pressing slow against Hive's leg. The squeeze of the other man's mind against his is a stabilizing force, pressing the chaotic rush of his thoughts back into some semblance of order -- somewhere underneath there's still a spin, still a whirl, but on the surface a current runs steadier and easier to track. "Yeah. A lot of catching up to do. And even if it gets to a normal pace here --" He sucks his cheeks inward, chewing briefly at their insides. "There's still this whole world outside the city that's struggling. A lot of us could do a lot of good out there right now." The names turn over in his head, Hive's words echoing alongside them. "If I started a podcast, I guess I'd sound like both." Slowly he's pulling himself upright. Reaching for the glass of water and settling back in against Hive's side. "I feel like I -- never really saw myself getting here either, you know? Even now, it feels sort of --" In his mind it's at once dissonant and not. Snippets overlapping; a tiny bare cell and a cosy Xavier's dorm. Staying up late to finish a term paper while ignoring the ache of still-healing bullet wounds. Scrambling from guard duty to class to training. Somehow the utter chaos of preemptive-pandemic-graduation fits very neatly into all this and still -- He takes a long swallow of water. His cheek rests against Hive's shoulder, hand dropping to slowly trace against Cat's side. "Flicker is fine," his words, finally, are slow and careful, "that'll always be a part of who I've been. But it might be kind of nice to finally. Slow down a little, you know?" "We've put up with a lot over the years in this house but are we really doing a podcast?" Hive already sounds resigned. He just shakes his head at Isra's offer of food, snagging his own glass of water. His arm drapes over Flicker's shoulders as the other man sits up. His cheek rests against the top of Flicker's hair, and he is quiet while his friend chooses his words. "Huh," is all he finally says, at first. His fingers curl in against the other man's shoulders, a slow tight squeeze. "That would be. Kind of nice."