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Log Title: Fourth Day Kicking
Setting: Apartment above Lafitte's, mid afternoon.
Log Cast:
Trace
Jason
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Trace has been sulking this past hour or so. Again refused Valium, he reluctantly made do with the forgotten Comet stored away in one of the lower leg-pockets of his jeans. Some had fallen out either end, but miraculously the only slightly mashed joint held up against the wear and tear. Kudos to Doug and his rolling skills. With his back leaned against the wall, the boy sighs softly, studying the roach in his fingers. Not worth an attempt at relighting it. It's almost entirely paper at this point. He flicks it away carelessly, folds his arms across his chest, and leans back. A glance towards the kitchen. What are you *doing* in there? Well, fuck it. He doesn't care, nope. Tells himself he's not curious and closes his eyes, leaning his head back to touch the back of his scalp to the plaster.
Actually, you can see he's been doing a lot of things. Wet shirts are laid out beneath the one uncovered window in the other room, and you heard him scrubbing at your bucket in one of your delerious states. Occasionally he passed by the doorway with either the PSX or the discman - with only one earphone in, of course. But as he ran out of things that needed immediate attention, you didn't see him move around as much. Just vague scrabblings and scratching that come intermitantly. Maybe you saw something flash across the doorway once or twice, like he threw a rag or somesuch across the room, but that's about it. As you finished up Comet though, there was just silence. Then, a few minutes after you toss the spent roach away, he finally comes wandering in, wiping blackened fingers on his jeans. Your chalk? The scrapes on his cheek have scabbed over finally, though it's /really/ hard for him not to pick at them, so there's a little streak of blood here and there. Hey, they itch. "Hey," he says softly. "Think you could keep some soup down?" Yeah, ever since the... incident, he's been immersing himself in the mundane things here. It's the best way to keep from thinking. Maybe this is how Ben feels...
Trace almost says no, just out of spite. Junk withdrawal makes you a prick. But the weed, smoked slowly, making it last, is tugging at his stomach a little, rumbling it about in protest at the neglect, so he sighs and relents, "Alright. Jest... a little. Take some of the noodles out for me. They're gross; they look like worms." He carefully unfolds his arms. "You been makin' soup in there?" Not that he's curious or anything.
Jason looks back over his shoulder to the other room. Um. Well. If you call hot water 'soup,' maybe he was. He looks back to you with a slight shrug of his narrow shoulders. "Uh, jus' cleanin' things up, I guess." A vague little look, and then he shrugs again. "Um, so, take some noodles out. Right." He tacks a little smile on as an afterthought, then turns and wanders back out again. Noodles. You hear him rummaging around and the sounds of some package being opened up and emptied into the plastic bowl. Then water being poured. Then, well, relative silence as he waits for the soup to... become soup.
Ushy gushy brainy worm noodles. Blech. Normally such imagery would appeal to the bluecap's palatte, but not now. The slightest thing sets it off, as I'm sure Jason realizes with all the bucket scrubbing he's been doing. "Isn't there nothin' else, though, sides soup? Like... somethin' sweet, or... somethin'. But I'll sip at some soup too." Very reluctantly he adds the last. He picks up the lighter that had helped put an end to Comet and sparks at it restlessly. Flick. Flick.
Jason blinks around the corner at you for a few long moments. Something.. sweet? Err, well, mebbe. "Um, Snickers? S'kinda hard, though, been in the ice..." He's just been giving you soup because it's a lot easier to keep down than just about anything else around here. "Um, 'r... Wait. Got some jelly... 'n some peanut butter. 'N bread." And you put those all together to form... "Mean, mebbe a san'wich if ya wanna try that?" Cause, hey, I fully expect to be cleaning it out of the bucket in a little bit. But oh well. May be mind-numbingly boring, but at least you're not hallucinating or anything right now.
"No bread!' Trace protests, then points out plaintively, "Lucy said to give me sweet stuff, member? Easier t'keep down f'people on junk f'some reason." And doesn't that please the boy. These doctor types were *telling* him to eat sweets. Wow. "So... so bring the..." He starts to ask for the frozen snickers bar, but then thinks of all those nuts and stuff, and how fun that'd be to get back up. Dammit. Then an idea occurs to him: "Jest the jelly," he grins a little. "An' a spoon."
Jason blinks a little more, and then returns the tentative grin with one of his own. "Um, kay... No noodles." His head disappears again and there's a creak of the styrofoam chest and a rattle of ice. And then he's trotting back in with a spoon, wiping the jar off on his shirt. Mm, grape jelly. He plops down cross-legged in front of you and unscrews the top to the jar. Then, like it was some gourmet meal or something, he offers the jar and spoon to you politely. "Your dinner, sah," he says softly, though with a little hint of his old humor in his eye.
"Thanks." Trace returns the grin with a shaky little one of his own, despite his black mood this past hour or so, and takes the spoon. He swirls it around inside the jar and comes up with a spoonful, but watching the dark gelatin blob quiver on the silver cradle before him makes him swallow. Ahhh... hmm. "Well, there can be *some* noodles, just not like... gobs and gobs of noodles." Okay, jelly. It doesn't look good right now, but it IS, dammit. He knows. He's mixed it with marshmallow cream before, and it was wonderful stuff. So he compromises and lets a little slide back off and takes a smaller spoonful, slipping it into his mouth. Mm. See, not so bad. He looks up at you hesitantly. "You want some..?" Maybe jelly improves his manners. Nah, it was probably the weed.
Jason looks at the jar o' jelly for a long moment before looking up to you with a faint smile. "Um, nah, already ate this week. Thanks." Actually, his appetite hasn't exactly been roaring lately either. He just sits and watches you with your bird-bites (which seem huge compared to how you've usually been eating lately) for a little bit, and then lowers his eyes to where his charcoal'ed fingers pick at the hem of your jeans. Thinking. Or... maybe /not/ thinking, rather. "Wonder..." he starts, but the thought's halted almost as soon as it started to creep out. Fingers. Jeans.
Trace plays with his jelly more than eats it, really. Just a tiny bite now and then, but more he scoops some up and lets it plop back down, or stirs, or taps at the sides of the jar with his spoon. When you speak, but trail off, he looks up. So okay, maybe he's curious. Maybe you won't give him Valium again just yet, but you'll give him jelly, and sweetly, so hey. He'll try to be almost pleasant. "You been drawin' or somethin'..?" he mumbles, eying your fingers. The hazel-rimmed black eyes fall back down to his jelly. Squish, plop. "Didn't think you did that."
Jason rubs his fingertips together at your question, eyes staying on them. "Nah... Jus'..." He chews on his lip for several moments, then just shrugs. "Jus' doodlin', I guess." Though on what is a mystery. The sketchbooks, both of them, are where you last saw them. He smirks a little bit, at himself. "Can't draw a line with a ruler." He thinks about it a moment, and then shrugs again. "Couldn' /write/ one either." But, wait... This shouldn't be about him right now. He finally glances up to you through his hair. "How's the jelly comin?" Think you can handle it?
"M'jelly's fine." Trace dismisses that line of conversation quickly. He doesn't wanna talk about how fun it will be to hack up grape-flavored spew later. He really doesn't. So that's as far as you get. We'll eat the jelly and not think about it. "I wanna see yer doodlin'." He sucks off the rest of the sticky dark purple ooze off the spoon and then pokes your knee with the tip of it. "C'mon. Show, even if ya think it sucks. Not like I got anythin' else fer entertainment."
Jason blinks a little up at you, brows furrowing. Wait, no one was supposed to see it, though. Or.. at least he didn't think anyone would when he was doing it. Actually, he wasn't thinking /much/ when he was doing it. Just did it. He frowns slightly. What /did/ he doodle anyway? Another look up to you, though this one's a little frightened. "But it's over there," he says softly. And, see, you don't go over there. You just lay here in the blankets, so over there was safe. Or... something. But then he just 'ums' at you and licks his lips, unsure. You /don't/ have anything else to look at, and he really couldn't deny if you if you insisted anyway.
In there, huh? Well, in there's where he's gotta drag his cramped, pained, sickly self. Not like he has a choice, though. As you pointed out, it couldn't possibly be more boring inbetween bouts of acute misery, and after all, Trace has never seen anything you've drawn. Even if it IS 'just doodlin'. "Couldn' ya jest draw on paper? Geez.." He grumbles as he hauls himself up with a groan. Ugh. Half a minute or so is spent hunched over and half-standing, trying to adjust to the dizziness and discomfort of being upright. Okay. We can do this. But ah, god, his muscles are stiff. Gonna have to see if he can con a very tentative backrub or something out of you as soon as his skin won't irritatingly protest the contact. Having long ago discarded his sneakers and socks in a feverish fit, he now thump-trudges barefoot towards the kitchen and immediately takes up a lean against the kitchen's entrance. Okay, where is this thing?
Jason helps as best he can, given knowledge of the discomfort of contact. But, like all things, you gotta stand on your own. If he /knew/ what he drew, maybe he'd take pride in the fact that you're putting yourself through this just to see whatever it was. Watching your achy self, though, he's going to have to con you into letting him give you a very tentative backrub or something as soon as your skin won't irritatingly protest the contact. He pads alongside you, dreading your reaction at what you see, though. All he knows is he wasn't in his right mind (not... that he ever is). He slips past you in the doorway and steps back out of the way, lip being gnawed at mercilessly. When he said doodling, though, he must have meant a lot of it. An entire corner is covered in just... pointless drawings. At least, pointless to an outsider. The most dominant thing, though, is a huge, arching door-way scribed out next to the window, complete with rough hinges and a doorknob. Scrawled on it in Jason's second-grader-like writing is 'tHiS WaY OUt.' Of course, that's the wall overlooking the alleyway, and it's somewhat ironic that the only thing that's visible out the window is a brick wall illuminated with a sickly gray light. The rest of the rather unskilled drawings are all cramped into the corner (and even some on the floor around where Jason must have been sitting). Wild lines and curly-cues, echoing the lines trapped on your page... Only these have an entire wall to explore, but they seem confined to the corner. An outline of his hand, which streaks down into something that's been smeared out. A rough representation of a pyramid, only one corner's been broken off. A cluster of what probably are trees, only drawn so they seem very far away. More lines surround a blank space on the floor, though much of what was there was smeared out his moving. And a huge, black patch on the wall that seems to have been /something/, but was deliberately blackened out. But one thing stands out just because it's out of the general mass in the corner. Four smeared paw-prints, drawn so well as to almost seem real, right in front of the window. As if something sat there and stared out. There's a broad sweep of light charcoal dust behind them.
Trace's eyes widen, staring at the etchings that now cover the corner of the kitchen. He's now clinging to the plaster of the entrance, as though he doesn't trust his legs to stand. It's studied for a long, long time from afar... Then he pushes away, harder than necessary, as though to gain some momentum, and moves closer. Once in the corner, he drops heavily onto the ground, very suddenly, whump, and just sits there blinkblinking up at your artwork. "Chaos.." he says very softly, lips barely moving, looking at the squiggles. And the pyramid makes him wince, before bowing his head and squeezing his eyes shut tight to hold back tears. Bat. He curls his arms around himself tightly, rocking a little, but finally lifts his head, looking up at the door now. He stretches a hand out, reaching for the 'knob', but lets it drift back down to rest in his lap. He sighs softly. "Oughta had you workin' on the mural all along..." he murmurs. So maybe it's not going to make it into any galleries, but your work cuts to the heart of things. He lifts a shaky hand to point to the black blotch. "What's that?" He turns back to you now, neck craning to get you into his line of vision. "Tell. You always steal up what I throw away, anyway..."
Jason almost draws blood, he's biting so fiercely at that lip as you look over his 'work.' He doesn't dare pull away from the wall he's propped himself up on with one hand because, well, he's becoming increasingly aware that his own legs aren't functioning properly anymore. The vague fear he felt at the thought of you seeing this has grown into an apprehension that makes his heart beat fast against the inside of his chest. He shakes his head quickly, taking a shuddering breath, trying to recover that part of him that let him seem in control around you and everyone else always. "No, I..." he starts, as if it were possible to deny the scrawlings as even his. Which he so desperately wishes he could do when your attention gets drawn in by the blotch. He shakes his head a little more. "Was... just..." But he can't. He can't think up a lie for it. Not something that would be plausible in the slightest. Not when you're seeing how he really thinks and feels. "S'just..." he starts off, the words coming haltingly as if he has to drag each one up from the abyss by hand. "I... don't know." And it's true, you can see it in his eyes. He /doesn't/ know what it is. "S'jus' something... that was there once. And..." His arm gives way and he presses against the wall. "It's not now. I didn't even see it leave." Is he talking about Bat? Or something from long before then?
"A... alright," Trace relents with a disappointed sigh, looking back to the blotch. It's still kind of hard to believe, in spite of the sincerity in your eyes. I mean, didn't you just draw this thing today? And you don't remember? He considers the loooong walk back into the other room and decides to put it off. Blankets and jelly can wait. "Well, see if I let you have my throw away pictures then," he counters, but looks up with a brief flash of teeth, something like a grin. Kidding, see? No, he knows how you horde those stupid black-natured things away like treasures. He looks back to the charcoal-covered corner.
Jason lowers his eyes at the sound of your disappointment, wincing just a little bit. He'd tell you if he could, honest. But, isn't it like an expression in itself? Once something, now nothing... The wince is more pronounced as you threaten to keep your 'throw-aways' from him, even though you might be kidding. To him, they're not stupid. They're just as essential as those happy, comfortable sketches. Because they're /real/. Not just something created for someone else's sake. He catches you glance to the blankets and jelly though, and that's all he needs for an opening for escape. If just briefly. A few moments later, he comes trotting back with one of the fresher blankets over a shoulder and the jar with the spoon it in his hands. He pads over and kneels down behind you, just... waiting for when you need him again.