Making Spaces Personal
Characters: Kyle and Zach Setting: Their rooms, mid morning
Kyle took some time after he responded to Zach. His new room was weirdly empty. Nobody had been here before him. He felt somewhat bereft, something he wasn’t thinking too hard on. He made himself take a shower - though there were no products, and he had to put his previous clothes back on. It felt odd, walking across to his old room in sleeping clothes, bare footed. But, it was what it was. He knocked on the door.
Zach kept weird hours. He'd bee awake, dressed, and reading when the alarm had gone off and just made his way to the new room. Yes. It was frustrating and annoying, but he didn't actually think of himself as in control of anything. It wasn't as if he had things. Winding up in Kyle's room had made him smile, remembering the number upon seeing the listing. Distantly he was relieved, pleased that the artist's work would be maintained and returned.
While he waited for Kyle, he studied the paintings there, hoping for emotional attachments and gaining none. When Kyle knocked, he answered without hesitation, holding the door open for him.
“Do you know they’ve shut down the elevators?” Kyle asked him. He had checked on his way over - his room being not too far from them. “We’re cut off from the other block.” He walked into the room and looked about, seeing all his work. He smiled a little, absently. “So glad they didn’t move me,” he breathed. He didn’t know how he would have coped with the loss of everything he had worked for. In certain unique ways it would have been harder than what he had actually lost.
"I hadn't seen it, but I'm not surprised. Why hurry and move us only to let us back. Luckily I had little other than what they gave me." Zach shrugged, watching Kyle in his own space. It felt more his than anyone else's and Zach wondered how long it would take for that to change. "I saw Adam was on the other side." Not intentionally, but he'd memorized the list by looking at it. And he was curious how Kyle was faring with that news.
Kyle looked down, away from his work when Zach mentioned Adam’s name. Kyle was still confused about what had happened earlier, he just wasn’t brave enough to try and contact Adam to ask what was going on. It felt like they maybe had a tentative friendship back, and Kyle was desperate not to risk fracturing that - or to find out it was all an illusion. “Yeah. He is. And me and Wren are over here. It’s - Wren’s his best friend. It’ll be hard on him,” he said, quietly, his tone entirely unreadable.
Zachary had his eyes on Kyle, watching the other man until he fell silent. "Wren and yourself," Zach corrected. "That sort of thing doesn't go away quickly, no matter how badly you might want it too." There was an inkling of truth in his voice, something more personal than usual. That combined with him wandering away, picking up a paintbrush and testing the none brush end of it had Zach giving away more than usual. "How will it be on you?"
Kyle turned away and started to fuss with the fixings that had Manhattan fastened to his wall. That was one work he was not leaving here without. “Same as yesterday, but with a lot less need for actual self control?” he suggested. He paused, then continued. “He hugged me, before he left. Said he didn’t really mean it. Which has me... Really fucking confused.”
That had Zach looking up from his own fidgeting. "Didn't really mean what?"
Kyle shrugged. “With that countdown, we didn’t really have a chance to go into detail, “ he admitted. “He just told me he didn’t mean it.” He took a deep breath and straightened, his posture growing stiff and proper. He looked round. “But, the elevators are locked. Talking about it is helping nothing. Could we maybe concentrate on which of my clothes you want. Which of my pieces you want. And getting the rest back to my new room?”
"You should ask," Zach said pointing towards the computer with the brush before nodding. The focus was better. "I tried to find something I enjoyed emotionally, but no luck. I did find this interesting," he said nodding towards something that looked like a dragon attacking an angel. "As for clothes, just the basics you can spare."
"Maybe," Kyle said, refusing to commit himself to anything at all. He couldn't deny he had considered it though. Instead he turned to the painting Zach was talking about. "I liked how that came out. It's one of my latest," he told the other man.
One of his latest. "So the angel.."
"I painted it the night of the party, after I got back to my room," Kyle told him, sidestepping the question.
Sidestepped or not, Zach was able to infer enough. "I find it interesting. Dramatic," he explained before looking back at Kyle. "What should be moved first?"
"Well, clearly this one is staying here," he said, indicating the angel and dragon. He wasn't sure how he felt about giving that to Zach, it was so personal and all linked into so much concerning them all. yet it was also the only thing that the somewhat confusing, at times seemingly emotionless, man had latched onto, so Kyle wasn't going to let that pass. "Manhattan goes first. Then my supplies. We can deal with clothes last," he said, getting his priorities laid out.
The decision wasn't one that Zach was expecting, but he didn't do more than nod. If Kyle thought it was a good piece for him to keep, then he'd keep it. It was interesting and dimensional and it would give him something to consider for an extended period of time. There was a ghost of a smirk on his features as he moved to help Kyle with the large painting. "I see the priorities." Art above the standard priorities.
Kyle grinned. "Good - then we should get moving," he said, grabbing a sheet off the bed to cover the surface of the large painting now that he'd managed to get it down off the wall. No way was he risking marring his favourite piece in years with fingerprints and oil.
Zach took one end of the sheet to help Kyle drape it over the painting then grab his side of it as gently as he could. He wasn't terribly strong but he managed to situate it well enough to carry it.
It was a difficult carry, but, fortunately, the two didn't have far to go. Kyle swiped the reader by the new door and backed into his new room. It was weird - empty and plain. "We'll just lean it here, against the wall," he said, indicating.
Zach spared a glance around the room. "This looks more like what my room did." It was a shame they couldn't just switch. It's be easier.
"Mine looked like this until the day they gave me art stuff." Then it had been filling up consistently. It was more than a passion - ever since, Kyle had been driven to produce. He would slow down eventually, he knew. It had simply been so long, and there had been stressful times when he had needed his art to focus on.
"I don't have many things. Or such an expansive hobby." He helped Kyle set down the painting, then turned back to the room. "How long before it looks like your old room again?"
Kyle chuckled. "With your help? Maybe a couple of hours," he joked.
"I have a feeling I have a much bigger task on my hands." Zach grinned and shook his head.
"What? To get rid of all the things I did to my room while it was my room?" Kyle asked him. He knew that he had probably, in most people's minds, pretty much trashed the space. There were bound to be marks and paint smears everywhere.
"To put it back together yes," Zach said with a shrug. "Or more to make it seem less like your space over all."
"Yeah, I can see how that might be weird for you," Kyle agreed. It was less so for himself. If anyone had lived here before, there were no signs remaining. It was, in effect, a blank canvas.
"Would you believe it's stranger because it's your space?" Zach asked, looking over at Kyle. It would have been one thing to be working with a stranger's room, but Kyle's? That was bizarre.
"A little, maybe? " Kyle suggested. "Moved into other people's spaces enough in prison proper. This is kinda different. Is there anything I can do to make that easier? " he offered.
Zach shook his head at the offer. "No. I will manage. I'm not usually very connected to the space I'm in." Because the spaces had just been there. Places to be before moving on to the next.
Knowing Zach the way he did by now, Kyle was vastly unsurprised by the comment. "Well, let's get the rest of my things, and then the space will be all yours."
Zach just found himself nodding along. He doubted the space would ever feel like his, even without the remnants of Kyle left about it, but he did promise to help the other man move and the faster they did, the more time he had to get himself settled in and re-learn new surroundings. "Lead the way."