InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "yeah, suck like a fox! "

Taeja Kim ☠ Jörmungandr (jormungandr) wrote in paxletalelogs,
@ 2011-10-03 06:51:00

Entry tags:

jormungandr, loki

In Útgarðar the Ancient Live...
Who: Richard & Adam.
What: Richard sets an effective lure for meeting fellow tenants.
Where: 507.
When: 30 September, 11:37 a.m.
Warnings: None yet.

It had been a long and arduous night for Adam Vejas. To the EMTs, nurses, physicians, and other medical personnel with whom he came into contact, it seemed that the nearer October drew, the stranger their work became. His own experience seemed to bear the theory out. Injuries were more frequent, particularly those of the inexplicable or atypically brutal variety. Violent crime had increased. Car crashes, house fires, assaults... the list went on. Even the waning of the full moon had done little to help things, thus keeping the more superstitious in their line of work quite thoroughly on their toes. But perhaps, he thought, it was only his shift.

Following the uncomfortable altercation with James, Adam had arranged to switch shifts with a coworker. His new assignment meant seeing less of Alex, but also less of his newly returned tormentor. He suspected it was a poor deal for more reasons than he dared admit, but for the time being, it was all he knew to do. As Adam stepped off the elevator, back onto his comforting, familiar floor, he could not help but press cold fingers to his cheek, prodding at the mark still fading there. Thus the double edged sword of pale skin shone through: It held color remarkably well, as both his tattoos and the faint grey smudge of his bruise could equally attest. The late shift had allowed him to hide the mark from the better part of their neighbors, but it also meant being party to the worst the steadily cooling nights had to offer. This was an acceptable, rational explanation to the increased violence he had seen, and Adam resolved to take it. He had had enough of mysteries.

Thus distracted, he was nearly to his own door (ignoring, of course, the sudden quickening of his pulse as he passed Alex's) before he heard the faint but rising notes of music. His keys stilled in his hands, the song sounding louder once that merry jingling was silenced. He cast his dark gaze down the hall, noting an open door, and light streaming from inside. The apartment in question had stood empty for some time; curiosity got the better of him, and he found he had to answer. He slipped his keys back into one pocket of his jumpsuit, his head canting curiously as he drew nearer.

"Hello?" he called, a friendly upward lilt creeping into his voice. Drawing up to the open door, he rapped his knuckles against the frame, peering inside. "Anybody home?"

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jormungandr
2011-10-08 11:16 pm UTC (link)

Adam had seen enough of his fellow tenants to be surprised that the offer of intoxicating bribery had not been enough to encourage them to turn out; he was not judging, by any means, having himself jumped at the one opportunity he'd been given to get thoroughly inebriated, but it did strike him as odd. Perhaps the timing simply had not been right for more to come. Regardless, it left him with a rare chance to taste vintages he would never ordinarily spend such money on, and he intended to take it.

"I'd love to take that off your hands," he admitted, at last stepping into the apartment. He allowed himself another look around the place, nodding as he did. "I'll even help you unpack a few boxes if it'd make you feel better about just giving it away." He smiled softly, one dark eyebrow arching. "So what brings you to Newport Beach from Chicago, if you don't mind my asking? I've loved it the few times I've been."

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atrickstertype
2011-10-09 05:16 am UTC (link)

Richard chuckled. "I'll take you up on that. You can help me with the enthralling task of sorting out the kitchen." He stepped over to the biggest remaining box, the one labeled 'Dishes and shit' and pulled out a pocket knife, cutting through the tape as he talked. "I moved here because it's where the work is. I'm in PR, just got a job with Pacific Life here in town. In house, which," he added as an afterthought, "is good. Kind of limiting, but good work."

He looked up and caught Adam looking around the apartment again. Richard caught the other man's eyes and grinned. "Don't judge it too harshly," he said, gesturing at the rest of the room, "I did only move in yesterday. It'll look better once the posters are up."

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jormungandr
2011-10-11 02:49 am UTC (link)

"Oh, not judging," he said, sincerely. He followed close after Richard, quickly closing the distance between them. A quick glance down brought the box's label into view; Adam smiled, nodding as he did. Reaching up, he toyed with the zipper of his jumpsuit, tugging it down past the collar of his white undershirt. "Only looking. It's always interesting to see how other people live. I like... observing, I guess."

He peered around Richard's shoulder, looking down into the empty box, more curious as to its contents than he likely had any right to be. The mention of posters had him curious, but as they seemed unlikely to be located in this particular box, and he had already exhausted his prospective allotment of questions regarding Richard's chosen aesthetic, Adam opted for a different tack.

"PR sounds like an interesting line of work," he said. "Are you the kind that builds goodwill or the kind that cleans up after messes?"

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atrickstertype
2011-10-11 04:54 am UTC (link)

Even though he was looking down into the top layer of newspaper and crockery as Adam talked, Richard couldn't help nodding at the other man's admission. "I know exactly what you mean," he said, unwrapping a glass loaf pan and looking up with a conspiratorial grin. "It's the only reason to go jogging through the nice part of Chicago at night. That, and the added bonus of not getting mugged." He put aside the pan, not much caring where it went. If he remembered how he had packed, the next piece was going to be the real doozy.

"As for PR," he added, digging down and tossing several pages of the Tribune onto the floor, "I've done both. They haven't said as much, but I'm guessing this job is going to be a lot of damage control. Because, you know. Life insurance." He unwrapped the next bulky object and found a coffee pot. Not what he was looking for.

"What about you, Adam? EMT, I got that from the uniform. Do you box too, or do people just not like having their lives saved?" Both hands still in the box, he nodded at Adam's bruise.

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jormungandr
2011-10-15 03:59 am UTC (link)

Adam chuckled, all too easily envisioning this potential mugging of which Richard spoke. Eager to help, unwilling to appear a simple freeloading or off-puttingly nosy neighbor, he reached into the box, pulling away the excess newsprint. He smiled at its hissing sort of crackle as he balled it up, then searched for an available receptacle for it. As he tossed the slowly unraveling ball into the garbage bin he considered Richard's chosen profession, the ins and outs of which Adam had very little understanding of; it seemed a difficult career, and one which Adam's personality would have almost certainly never have allowed him to pursue. He could not imagine, for instance, going to bat for a company whose aim was to deny a claim; his was a nurturing personality, a caregiver, one who strove to provide whatever aid he could, and then to simply fade into the background again. Disputing claims seemed antithetical to the very fabric of his being.

His mind thus occupied by such rabbit trails, it took Adam a moment to realize the thrust of Richard's question. Once he had, however, the difficult part became formulating an answer that at once addressed the query and did not wholly embarrass its target. An off kilter twitch of a smile crossed his lips, his eyes darting down from Richard's, deep into the box before them. "Ah," he said. Carelessly he reached up, pressing at the paling bruise. "Sometimes I get hit, yeah." He pulled a fist full of cooking utensils, all neatly wrapped, from within the box. "People come to, you know, and they don't know where they are... sometimes they just flail more than we'd like. But this..." He gave a mirthless little laugh. "This was from an old friend. We had a misunderstanding." That word again - James' word, and Adam had gone along with it like any compliant, abused partner. It should have been shameful, and yet Adam felt no shame in it. At last he looked back up to Richard, forcing his shaky smile to grow a bit broader. "I'm sure that makes the best first impression, huh."

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atrickstertype
2011-10-16 07:12 am UTC (link)

That comment provoked an unintentional snort from Richard, which came out before he noticed how uncomfortable Adam looked. Awkward. He gave it a moment's thought, recapping his most memorable fistfights, and then shook his head. "Nah. I think it makes sense," he shrugged expressively, "though that might say more about me than about the question. Must have been quite the 'misunderstanding'." He didn't quite buy Adam's story, but the whole answer seemed way too touchy for Richard to pursue the conversation. Instead, he leaned in to the box, pulling away one last layer from a bulbous object and revealing some brown lacquer. Yes, just the thing to lighten the mood.

The standard line about conversation pieces seemed to be that they were supposed to be classy and understated, and to a certain point Richard agreed with that. The object he pulled out of the box was his one big exception to that rule. "Could you find a place for this in on the kitchen counter?" he asked, holding out the cookie jar with a smirk.

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jormungandr
2011-10-18 01:47 am UTC (link)

"You could say that," he said, grateful for Richard's hasty departure from that still raw topic.

Adam laughed aloud as the cookie jar came into view. He had wandered around his share of flea markets and yard sales to know there was a market for this sort of thing, and he found himself, true to his typical practicality, wondering if it might be worth something. But his host hardly seemed the McCoy collecting type, and in context this seemed more an item procured for its kitsch value - and for humor's sake, perhaps - than for its actual monetary worth. It had done its job in that, Adam thought. Delicately he put Mr. T's scalped mohawk atop his kiln-fired head, casting a needlessly dramatic look of appraisal around the kitchen. After a moment he decided on just the place for it: A position of prominence atop the counter, placed where guests entering the kitchen would immediately be greeted - or pitied, however the case may be - by the hollow bust.

"Any other surprises like that lying around?" he asked.

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atrickstertype
2011-10-18 11:43 pm UTC (link)

Richard had been 11 years old when The A-Team premiered, and it had hit him like a ton of bricks. He had talked his mother's ear off about the show, explaining in great detail exactly why Face was the best and coolest person ever, and how Mr. T's radical chains weren't 'garish', and why couldn't they have a van like that? Every Wednesday over dinner he had recounted that week's episode, complete with sound effects and impressions, in an attempt to cheer his mother up. It had never been completely effective, but as far as he knew she had never watched a full episode. "I'd rather hear about them from you," she had said with a smile, tousling his hair. They had meant a lot to him and, he thought, to her. The cookie jar had come from the store she had worked at, an authentic bit of nostalgia and kitsch that she had given him on the birthday right before he left for college. Since then, Mr. T had been pitying fools from his vantage point in every kitchen Richard had ever owned.

Watching Adam find it a place of honor, Richard grinned. "Nothing just like that," he admitted. "Most of the really weird stuff is already unpacked and in the record cabinet over by the media center. Posters are over in that stack of frames by the front door. You could hang those, if you wanted. This stuff is mostly just boring kitchen wares." He picked up the loaf pan and the coffee pot and carried them over to their respective places in a cabinet and inside the coffee maker.

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jormungandr
2011-10-19 12:51 am UTC (link)

"Record cabinet?" Adam paused in his procurement of further items from the box, willing himself to continue in this task before becoming truly fixated on this tempting new topic. He was supposed to be helping, after all, and if he planned to earn his rather expensive reward, he felt certain he had to provide tangible and thorough assistance. Still, he saw no harm in asking, particularly if he managed to continue his work while doing so. "Do you just collect, or do you really listen to them?"

Carefully he broke the emptied box down, setting it neatly aside before moving on to the next. "I'll leave the posters to you," he said, cutting in before Richard could answer his first question, hoping he did not seem rude. "I'd be kind of particular about that kind of thing, so I'd rather you put them wherever you'd like."

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atrickstertype
2011-10-20 07:02 am UTC (link)

Richard snorted, trashing another handful of newspaper. "Well, I was going to move them around after you left, obviously," he joked, "but then I would have nails in the walls already, and everything would be easier." It occurred to him that normally he would have hesitated before teasing someone this way. Maybe it was part of that weird sense of familiarity, but he felt pretty sure that Adam could take it. So far, he had still to see any signs that he was wrong.

Leaning over, he saw the contents of the next box. "Hmmm. More books? I thought I was done with those. Just toss them on that shelf, I'll arrange things later." He continued tidying some of the trash left behind by the last box and then threw Adam a look filled with mock-disapproval. "And of course I listen to them. I mean, CDs are fine and all, but for older stuff the original is usually just better. None of this remixed crap." He had heard of people who just collected records, but he still couldn't quite wrap his head around them. "What's the point of having music if you don't listen to it?"

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jormungandr
2011-10-26 12:18 am UTC (link)

Adam gave a quiet laugh at the little jibe, a clear mental image dancing through his head of his new neighbor scurrying through the flat after he had gone, repairing the aesthetic damage Adam might have made. It was best, he knew, to leave such objective decoration to the particular eyes which would have to look at it for a prolonged amount of time. He did not dare consider what his own space might look like were he to give the creative reins over to someone else; the thought of attempting to do the same to someone else was to him equally untenable.

Instead of dwelling on such things Adam turned himself again to the task at hand, dutifully reaching down into the box, coming up with a stack of assorted books. He unabashedly read over their covers and spines as he set them aside.

"No point at all," he agreed. The first stack of books met the counter with a careful but solid thump. "But there are some good remixes and mashups out there, you know. Sometimes reworking something makes it that much... more. You can't count them all out." He thought for a moment. "I mean, look at Cash's cover of 'Hurt.' You can't really say the original was better. Can you?" He quirked a black brow, looking up, as if the answer might color more than his assessment of Richard's taste in music.

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atrickstertype
2011-10-26 05:00 am UTC (link)

As a general rule, Richard stayed away from newer music. If Adam had mentioned a remix by any other artist, the odds of Richard hearing it would have plummeted. But, well, it was Cash. "That's different," he said, helping himself to a handful of books. "I mean, that's Johnny Cash versus Trent Reznor. I don't have anything against NIN." He smirked, shrugging and taking an armful of books over to the shelf. "Not usually, anyway. But on their best day, they didn't have anything on Cash." Firestarter went next to a beat-up copy of The Maltese Falcon and he thought about it, trying to rephrase his point.

"I'm not saying that there isn't any room for improvement. What I'm saying is that the process of turning a record into a CD is a real problem sometimes. And they're just..." he waved a copy of Skin and Other Stories, at a loss for words. "Not as satisfying. If it's a choice between the original vinyl and a reprint, I'll go with the original any day."

He glanced over at Adam, amused. "But, you've got me on one of my music rants. I'll stop. What do you listen to?" He threw the question out with a grin, giving Adam a way out of the conversation, if he wanted it.

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