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Log Title: January

Log setting: The playground

Log Cast:
Tiens
Trace

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Tiens' Desc:
Save for the fact that it's the most cliched image ever, you might want to think "Fallen Angel," when you see this young man. Tarnished, yes -- but there's no denying that an exceptionally sure hand crafted the features, sharp and wide-eyed -- shrewd cocoa irises far deeper in shade than the smooth blend of cafe au lait that extends over his cheekbones and around the tense, friendly smile of his lips and chin. His manner is alternately wary and open: the rhythm of the street, of need, of pragmatism -- at war with some other, inner impulse. The apparent contradiction lends to his appeal, the combination of the jaded and the innocent more handsome in mixture (as in the melange of his race) then in any singular, limited choice. His hair is a dark black and twisted into tiny dreds, ending in black and grey beads, that fall just past his chin. They make soft noises, rattling gently as his attention shifts from one place to another. There is a wide-eyed quality about his manner that's at odds with the ease with which he carries himself. His voice is expressive, perhaps at times almost nervous, but quick to chase the sale, to sound out the buyer.

N'Awlins heat seems to dictate the fashion: a tight black mesh tank displays creamy Creole skin and a tight, defined physique to advantage. His build is narrow-shouldered and none-too-tall, perhaps naturally slim but honed to something more severe by circumstance. A pair of baggy jeans shorts is looped around his waist by a ratty leather belt, and lean legs are visible, his feet either barefoot or (when required), encased in a pair of beat-up Nikes. Over his shoulders is a battered blue work-shirt, and slung there as well is a large bike-messenger sack suitable for carrying all sorts of stuff. He seems ready for most anything. (+details available)

Tiens passes through the edge of the ring of strange trees -- the setting suits him: he has an air of strangeness about himself, these days, his sungold optimism somehow being blunted into something simpler. He looks strangely vulnerable, though you can't necessarily place that adjective to any actual facet of his person. He's not smoking, but the air of chicory and nicotine drifts with him, accompanied by the faint rustle of beads.

Trace sits on one of the swings, swaying gently. Small, chalk-covered hands are wrapped around the chains, wistful unfocused eyes turned inward to his thoughts, though they aim towards the base of a redwood on the other side of the playground. The boy looks slightly thinner than last you saw him. He's off in some other world right now, and the rattle-click of your beads don't pull him from whatever fancies or troubles hold him.

Like walking through ocean waves, as if against pressure, setting draws Tiens' attention -- where he is, who is there, the sound, the smell, the additional vegetation: He moves through the circle of redwoods as if stepping between worlds. He is indeed, hardly anchored to this one -- as if he were to vanish from sight if he turned at the right time, to the right angle. Though delayed, he still misses little, he takes in Trace's condition as strangely analogous to his own. He reaches his hand down, lifting an apple from near his feet and holding it in his palm. He tilts his head to it, suddenly, face distorting as something about it spooks him and he tosses it off to one side: a tiny 'thud' against the quiet.

Where the beads didn't capture his attention, the tossed apple does. Trace looks up slowly, blinks once, then centers a calm hazel eyes upon you. A darker hazel than last time he met your gaze, but it's just an illusion brought on by larger pupils. His lips purse, fingers tightening on the chains just a little. You are a puzzle to him, and conflict crosses his face clearly as he finally offers a slight smile. "They're good apples," he informs you quietly. "If ya can find one what ain't rotten or mushed."

Tiens gestures with his right arm, "bugs," he drawls, his voice lightly ironic. You see strange marks around his wrist -- wide bands, perhaps three inches, where the skin's been burned a harsher, paler color than his natural shade. Your attention...focuses him: you have the distinct image in your mind of other voices, other presences, which seem to recede slightly as soon as Tiens has a place to throw his attention. "Hey'all," he drawls, nodding in agreement to your pronouncement. Silence, cool and autumnal flickers between you with a light touch. "How you been?" he asks, curious maybe.

Trace squirms a little beneath that autumn gaze, fingers uncurling from the chain briefly and resettling. "Better," he says softly. Perspiration, marijuana, and loneliness hang in thick stench over the boy on the swing. He peels his eyes away from yours, shifting them to a flutter of wind and winking sunlight through dark leaves. "But I like this place. It's a safe place."

Tiens nods, the rattle returning and then stopping. Unwillingly, the sound is strangely macabre. This place may be safe, but it's unable to banish whatever personal cloud is haunting the young man. His fingers shift with the wind, restless. A restlessness that animates underneath his skin and gives him an unsettling presence...as if motivated to move, but unsure of direction. "january," he finally mutters, enigmatic.

"January..?" Trace says with soft prompt in his voice. The boy scuffles his shoe into the sand, toe digging, which grinds one of the undone laces into the grit by accident. "What 'bout it?" The chains grind gently against the metal that secures them at the top of the swing, the slightest creak accompanying his rocking. It's not a grating sound, just another part of the playground's whispered orchastra of swaying branches and the hushed ripple of grass. A serenity to war with your restlessness, and pronounce it.

Tiens cocks his head to the side, a smooth shrug which falls somehow off beat with your rocking swing. "Ah'm just not shoah I like it too much," he drawls with a hint of a smile. Melancholic, the tones of his voice squeeze through the calm morning air, the simplicity of space between two people, the strange lurking presence of half-sensed dreams and the strange haunting....something that lurks around Tiens, as omnipresent as ganja and the weight of summer heat here, even in the coolness of midwinter.

"Yeah," Trace agrees with a weary chuckle. "Yeah, I think it's safe t'say the start'a this year's tryin' t'pack in as much hell as it possibly can." He lifts his shoulders and drops them gently, the slightest shrug. "But y'cain't blame the season. S'jest...." He looks out over the playground, the wind picking up blue threads that have escaped the ratty braids, fluttering and tickling against his skin. "S'jest how it goes," he finally decides vaguely. "Too much heaven and th'devil man say it's time you stoop fer him awhile."

Tiens laughs, light and thin. "Ah hear that," he agrees, speculative. "Tho I doan' hold too much by the devil," he admits with a certain wariness. His own earthtones have, for a moment, as unnatural a hue as any cerulean azure braid does flickering near your cheek. "Ah'm not quite sure _who_ has it in fo' me," he pouts, his lips having a bit of humor still sliding along the curve that can't quite ride all the way along the voice. "But his pockets be _damn_ deep," he mutters.

Trace looks at you, and curiousity holds his gaze just briefly, clearing the wistful clouds, the need and self-pity to feel for you. "Hope y'kin' git away from whoever it is," he says softly, and surprises himself by meaning it. Such a silly grudge he'd held anyway, he decides, and it feels good to let go of it. "What ya gonna do?" he wonders. "It be somethin' strong, if it chases ya even to my playground." White hands uncurl from the thick chains of the swing, and he settles the slender marked forearms upon his thighs and sitting slightly hunched over.

Tiens thinks on this a bit, his steps leading him in a variety of directions, a spirograph of mixed emotions pushing his feet about. "Ah'm not quite sure what's gonna happen," he says, finally, and there's a sense of victory in embracing the uncertainty. "Ah've been trying to keep a low profile," he says, thoughtful...perhaps that's the nature of his relative absence, of late. He shrugs a shoulder. "But ah think that it's something comin' soon, I can feel it like you sometimes feel when it's gonna' rain or a fight's gonna' break out." He flickers his lips into a strange sort of rueful smile, as if the metaphor he'd thought to use for explanation had instead obfuscated things, clouded something.

Trace nods a little, but you're right in that your meaning is quite clouded. "Can't stop storms from comin," he says unhelpfully. "Maybe yer stuck as I am. Nothin' t'do but wait, n'hope for the best." He feels somewhat the fool, trying to extend advice when he's wholly unsure what's dogging your heals in the first place, but there it is anyhow. A smile ghosts across his lips, perhaps an attempt at encouragement, before he averts his eyes shyly.

Tiens smiles a bit, his own perhaps bulwarked faintly by your offering. "Ah just doan' like sittin' round," he says, finally -- he laughs at himself. "Not that ah've been stayin' in one place," he clarifies, "But jus' hit by all sortsa stuff ah can't really...do nothin' about." He quirks a strange, melancholic smile, not without some sort of haphazard comfort taken. "Hope is regularly mah stock-in-trade," he says, mock-reprimanding. "But now ah think ah just have to go's beggin' for it." Advice? Well, perhaps he hasn't met blue-braided Dear Abby, but he's mellowed a bit, given a voice to bounce ideas off of rather than the constant voices in his brain. "How is everybody?" he asks, with some care and curiousity, but also a little trepidation. I mean, in as long as he's been in New Orleans, how many times has the answer to that question been _good_?

Trace regards you, and wets his lips thoughtfully as he tries to come up with some way to grapple that question. "Well, I kinda... just got back after somethin' I had to do, but things're..." He worries at his lip during a pause, but reluctantly continues, finding himself less and less able to stop the flow of his words. "Tense." He begins, sighing softly. And this is how you do it, too. He's heard and sensed that you're one who listens too closely to everything, but your timing is fabulous, so his confidence is won in a small flood for you to sift through. "Somethin's up with Ben an' Walker, but they ain't talkin' t'us 'bout it. Ain's missin', an' ain't left no word. Me, I'm fourteen days clean now, an' scared t'do anythin' but lie around the house or putz about here. Jason's the one what held me through it all, an' he's recoverin' from alla terrible shit I put him through while we was locked up together durin' my dry out. An' Batiste..." He looks down with a sorrow that reluctantly settles across his gaunt features. "Bat didn't make it through the dry out... He's lost to me right now. I know ya keepin' a low profile, but if you see him, y'tell him come find me, okay? I don' care if he ain't clean, I wanna see him."

Tiens sifts throught this, nodding lightly. "Sounds like you've been busy," he says with a quiet sort of surety. It's strange for him, normally laundry lists like these send him into easy motion, fixing, smoothing. He pulls a few of his own braids back from his forehead. He nods. "If ah see Batiste, Ah'll tell him," he agrees. He takes a seat not too far from the swings, thinking. "Ah wouldn't mind too much about Jason, 'neither," he says, thoughtful. "I mean, do whatcha can, but ah think any hard stuff you went through with him -- he'll know it was worth it." He licks his lips.

Trace nods a little. "Me an' Jason's close right now, close as ever. He's jest... worn down, y'know? But he was so brave.." There's such a fondness in his eyes when he speaks of the redhead. "An' even when I was horrid to 'im an' cursin' him, he held on. But he was a wreck by the end; we both were. I dunno." He starts to swing gently, filthy caked shoelaces dancing and brushing the sand beneath his feet. "It's so many things t'heal, an' all 'bout as easy t'wrap yer hands 'round as mist. Dunno. Anyway, I'm sorry. That's my January hangin' over me anyway, an' I didn' mean t'pour it on ya when yer runnin from yer own."

Tiens shrugs his shoulder, easy. "Like Pies and Punchbowls," he says, easily enough. "My troubles are in a totally differen' place," his eyes follow the motion of branches in silhouette. "So I don' mind hearing about where yours're coming from." He smirks, gentle. "And about as tangible as your own." He gestures a bit. "Though I think things are gonna get better, for what you said," he says. "It's spring, soon 'nuff -- and people'll rest up and get better an' all that." He seems to believe this. He wrinkles his chin, thinking. He tilts his head, curious. "How you feel, bein' clean?" he asks, curious to see what you think of a sensation he hasn't had for quite a while.

"'Course it's hell," Trace sighs softly, and nearly drags his feet into the ground to halt his swinging, but decides against it at the last minute, picking them up again and kicking up a little splash of sand with his heels. "But I guess... it's nice to see Jason so proud of me. And sometimes it's okay, and I think God, I'm free, but I dunno. Lotsa times I just really wanna fuckin' hit. So, y'know, I end up smokin' too much weed, or lose myself in drawin' a mural, an' jest try not t'think about it." His braids slip back and forth as he swings, batting at his bony shoulders and occasionally the chains of the swings. "They say it gets easier."

Tiens mmmms, nodding. "Well, or rather you just fill your mind with other stuff, and you think about it less," he says, casual but serious. Not making a big deal of it but not discounting the triumph of it, either. He licks his lips, something strange in his eyes suddenly. He looks at a spot right above your left ear. "You keep with it," he says, hollow but encouraging. "Ah gotta split." He flashes an oblique, apologetic smile. "Ah think ah may be infectious." Like his mood his drawl slides in and out as he unfolds himself and slips out of the park, easy.

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