monstertea | [TAZ] i know i like to draw that line when it starts to get too real

[TAZ] i know i like to draw that line when it starts to get too real

The problem isn't that the kid is too young to walk himself home, it was the neighborhood. Taako doesn't live in the slums, but his neighborhood isn't really a place for kids to wander around alone, either. Especially a boy detective who does't know how to keep his nose out of other people's business. That's why he's stuck with the kid in the first place, or so he reminds himself when his brain starts to think too fondly of him.

He walks at a languid pace next to Angus, knowing but not acknowledging that he's in no hurry to go home. "You keep working on that mage hand," he says as they walk through a neighborhood much nicer than Taako's. "Just don't go trying anything fancy on your own, little dude." It's a historic area where buildings have been converted into homes and quickly filled by the hoity-toity type of people who like white picket fences and employ other people to take care of their homes. It's easily the nicest foster home Angus has been in yet. So Taako could have dropped him off at the corner, it isn't a neighborhood that sees trouble. He tries to avoid run-ins with Angus's family, but he always has an excuse to see him to his door. At least with this neighborhood he has the easy excuse that it's just interesting to look at the houses, to answer Angus about what each building used to be. Yeah, he knows shit, too. He's just trying to remind the kid that he isn't smarter than him, he's not trying to impress him.

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"That sounds excellent, I'll be looking forward to it." Not only because it means he'll get to meet with Taako again, but he's genuinely excited at the prospect of getting all this started and under way. It's going to look so nice once the job is finished, he can already tell, and he plans to give Taako a pretty hefty budget to work with.

Once his offer is accepted, he intends to lead the way back to the kitchen, but Taako takes the head as they move inside, which he finds highly amusing. "Do you know where you're going?" he asks, arching an eyebrow as he follows.

"No idea, my man, your office is just more welcoming than the courtyard god forsook out there," Taako answers. He's maybe feeling a little too at ease, because normally he's most comfortable meandering behind everyone else. He literally and metaphorically does not let other have his back. "Please," he says, gesturing widely with both arms. "Lead the way."

"I would have been kind of freaked out if you did know where you were going, since this is supposedly your first time here," Kravitz says, moving around Taako to take over the lead. There's a large arched doorway at the back of the living room that opens up into the kitchen and dining space. There's a large picture window where the table and chairs are situated, but most of the space is dominated by the literal restaurant-quality kitchen, all sleek metal appliances, warm granite counter tops, the best custom designed cabinetry that Fantasy IKEA had to offer, the whole work. It had cost a small fortune, but Istus made this delighted cooing noise every time she came in, and cooked dinner for him twice a week, so it was worth the investment in his opinion.

"Can't say I'm not curious to wander around, see if you missed a skeleton or just have another one tucked away somewhere," Taako says. He opens his mouth to keep going but as they enter the kitchen he goes silent. For a moment, his mind just blanks out and he's walking into the kitchen with eyes wide. He looks like a kid in a candy store. "Shit, look at this place! Didn't skimp on a single thing in here!" All pretense of being a guest is lost as he studies the oven, the stove, runs his hands over the counter tops, barely contains himself from going through drawers to see what kind of cookware is stowed away. "I could get my fucking cook on for days in a kitchen like this!"

"Unless there's some hidden in the drywall in the basement, I really doubt there's anyone here besides Jenkins," Kravitz says, heading for the fridge to retrieve something for the both of them to drink. It visibly startles him, though, when Taako exclaims like that, suddenly moving through the kitchen as if he's in some kind of trance, checking out the oven and stove, running his hands greedily over the flawless marble of the counter tops.

"Do you like cooking?" he asks, smiling fondly as he removes a water bottle for himself, only to hesitate when he realize he doesn't know what Taako wants. "What do you want to drink?" he asks. "I can see you're about to crawl out of your skin, you want to snoop so badly, so go ahead. I'm not hiding any body parts in any of the cabinets, so let me know if you find any; I'll have to have words with my sister."

Taako is knocked out of his trance the second Kravitz asks if he likes cooking. He visibly deflates and for a moment he almost looks lost. "Water," he answers. What he really wants is to chug a bottle of wine, toss it straight back like rain quenching a drought.

He's not sure why he does it. Maybe it's fact that he barely knows Kravitz that makes it so easy to say, or maybe it's just the spell the kitchen has cast over him. He doesn't play it off with a joke, though. "Used to be a bomb-ass chef. Cooking was like, the whole reason I got out of bed. I was gonna be the next Emerill Lagasse, but shit broke bad and all that's out the window like so much trash," he says, laughing mirthlessly.

Nodding, Kravitz grabs another bottle of water from the fridge before closing it, setting one of the bottles on the island's counter and keeping one for himself. It's sort of odd to see Taako just...deflate, like that. Even though he hasn't known the elf for very long, he can tell by the way people like Angus and Merle deal with him that high energy no bullshit with a strange dash of optimism is the way he rolls. So the somber expression and mirthless laugh strike him as oddly vulnerable, and he feels like the least qualified person in the world to offer comfort to anyone else. He's just not good at it, hasn't had nearly enough practice to be.

"That makes you uniquely qualified to understand the shitty feeling of having to give up doing what you really love for a living," he says, his expression not pittying or sympathetic, but merely soft, as if to show he's listening to what's being said without judgement. "It's always a raw deal. I'm sorry things went south for you, you didn't deserve that."

Taako swallows past a lump in his throat, not looking up at Kravitz. He catches a glimpse of his expression and for a second he thinks he's gonna lose it and just let everything out. He can't do that shit, though, not to someone he barely knows; preferably not ever. Kravitz isn't looking at him with pity, thank fuck, but he seems plenty uncomfortable, too. He is not fucking doing this.

"Didn't do a damn thing to deserve it," he agrees, some levity returning to his tone. He grabs the water bottle sitting on the counter, opening it to take a long drink. "Not like I killed people or something, just boring old story about getting fucked over by a dirt bag." He takes a smaller sip, leaning against the counter. "What about you and this music thing? You play some instruments still or anything?"

Kravitz lets Taako have the moments he needs to collect himself, opening his own bottle of water and drinking from it, opening the dishwasher to check and make sure it ran it's cycle properly (of course it did, it's brand new, but he's not going to stare like some sort of alien while the elf looks so very, very close to some kind of precipice of a breakdown). "In the entertainment industry, it seems like there's three of those for every decent person," he says, not minding at all that Taako has shifted the subject away from something that so very clearly is still a raw wound.

"I do, actually. Piano and guitar are my primary loves, but I can play several instruments besides those. I'm planning on turning the basement into a studio, so unfortunately my piano is still in storage while the renovations down there are still yet to be finished," he says, glancing from side to side as if checking to see if some mysterious third party is listening before leaning forward, tone of voice secretive. "Do you want to see the body drawers?"

He feels some kind of relief to hear that Kravitz is still a musician, even if it's not what he's doing for a living. Taako wouldn't wish having the thing you love spoiled for anyone. "You got me beat, I can only just carry a tune," he says, not showing how impressed he is, because he doesn't doubt for a second that Kravitz is talented. Probably one of those assholes who can do everything well.

He quirks an eyebrow when Kravitz looks around and leans in and then fights back a grin. "You are fucking with me, you do not still have body drawers in your house! Who lives in a house with body drawers? Like, this place was a functioning morgue! Those things have to be so gross!"

"I'm sure you can carry enough of a tune to sound lovely when you sing," Kravitz says, his tone of voice conveying that yes, that's a genuine statement, because no, he doesn't really understand or use sarcasm. "Do you cook, still?" And....hmm, maybe that's not a smart thing to ask, but Taako had been rather candid in telling him that things ended on a sour note with his professional cooking career, so hopefully he isn't stepping on any toes.

"Just like Jenkins, they've been bleached and cleaned," Kravitz says sensibly, although he's grinning rather unabashedly. "They're a central fixture of the original building, how could I not keep them in tact? All that storage just built into the walls."

He hesitates in answering the question about him still cooking, because that's the real sore spot. If he could just cook without getting caught up in fantasies of what could have been, he could move on already. Unfortunately, he's always dreamed big, and he can't let that go. "I cook, but I mean, just enough to feed myself, nothing like I used to. A college kid with a hot plate could probably make something more impressive than the shit I cook."

"Now you are so not convincing me about this not being a lich thing, my dude. Like every second I am here, I am so much more convinced." He doesn't sound put off, though, quite the opposite. He has a clear fascination with the idea of the body drawers. "Hell yes I want to see these bad boys. "

"I understand. It took me...seven years, before I even so much as looked at a sheet of music again," he admits, making a face. "And even then, it was another year before I started playing in seriousness. Having music in my life again is still very much a new thing. It takes time, if it's ever meant to happen again." Hopefully, he manages to land somewhere in the area of encouraging but not arrogant. Just because he was able to overcome his own issues with losing his career in music doesn't mean Taako faces the same issues, or will ever want to cook the same way again.

"I've made my peace with it, at this point," Kravitz sighs, making a beckoning motion and heading out of the kitchen back into the living room. Down a small hallway with several doors, he eventually opens the one at the end, turning on a light that illuminates the stairway. As soon as he opens the door, it's clear that this part of the house isn't finished, not even close. The walls are discolored with age, and the stairs creak badly as Kravitz leads the way down. At the bottom, he leads the way through a few smaller rooms. "I'm planning on opening all this space up. These were rooms used for viewing the bodies and for waiting members of the deceased's family," he explains as he leads his way back.

Beyond those smaller rooms, there's one big, long one, with about a dozen huge metal drawers inset into a fixture that dominates the entire far wall. Just like in fucking Fantasy CSI, it's the drawers where bodies were kept until they were prepared and ready to be buried or cremated.

Taako fucking hates feelings. He hates feeling bad, he hates talking about them, and he hates that he appreciates Kravitz's words, that he can relate. "It's only been about three years, so maybe there's hope for me yet," he says. He doesn't believe it, but saying it isn't as hard as it should be.

He follows after Kravitz as they head down the hall and bites his lip against making a joke about getting a tour of the whole house. He's not sure if he'd pick up on the innuendo. So he lets Kravitz go down a few steps before he starts down the stairs. He doesn't fully trust them to support him and is glad when he reaches the bottom.

"So this is where all the ghosts are gonna be hanging out," he says. The rooms are giving him the creeps, which leads him to walking a bit closer to Kravitz. If something happens, he's gonna be the survivor. The room with the body drawers is easily the creepiest and most enchanting, though. "You could throw one hell of a Halloween party down here."

Edited 2017-03-18 02:41 (UTC)

"Maybe," Kravitz says in agreement, and is content to leave it at that. There's no sense in lingering on it any longer, especially not when it puts that look on Taako's face, like he's being hunted and is seconds away from bolting. It makes his stomach tighten unpleasantly, and although he knows intellectually that there's nothing he can do, the emotional part of him wants to help somehow, if he even can.

It flusters him when Taako starts following him so closely, clearly unnerved by the space, but it's definitely understandable and not some kind of flirting. "It'd be a terrible party," he confesses. "Me, my sister, and Jenkins. We'd really let ourselves go." Yeah, he doesn't really...do friendships, or social gatherings. Makes parties kind of a bummer.

Moving slightly down the wall, he indicates a drawer about on eye level with Kravitz, and therefore a little higher up than Taako. "This is where I found Jenkins," he says, probably needlessly, because scrawled on what looks to be an ancient index card, in messy cursive writing, is the name 'Jenkins'. "He was the only one."

"What?" Taako sounds truly offended. "You wouldn't invite me to your spooky party? Jenkins would be devastated. I bet he'd invite me as his plus one." He doesn't comment that Kravitz doesn't mention any friends. If left to his own devises, he wouldn't have any friends himself. He's never openly called them friends and they've all pretty much accepted that, thankfully.

Taako tilts his head back to look up at the drawer, steadying himself with a hand on Kravitz's shoulder to look at the index card. "Saying it that way sounds almost ominous. The only one left... was Jenkins. I love that you just use his real name. That is just bonus creepy, my dude, like just, hanging out in your office with this skeleton that you know the name of, that is a spooky thing you got going on."

"Would you come if I invited you?" Kravitz asks, and wow that...sounded a lot more honest and vulnerable than he meant. They're just talking about some dumb hypothetical Halloween party, but he has to go and get his big dumb stupid crush involved. It sucks. It sucks because Taako is gorgeous, and funny, and apparently finds how creepy he is to be endearing and not the crippling blow that makes people decide that his good looks aren't worth suffering through the literal skeleton in his office.

"Mission accomplished, I was trying to be ominous." That's a lie, but whatever, unintended bonus affect. "I don't know anything besides that. All the records got cleared out of here, so I don't know if that's his first or last name, how he died, who he is, none of it. He's just...Jenkins." A flush comes to his cheeks when Taako holds onto his shoulder for a better look at the index card, but he doesn't comment on it; only mentally prepares himself to steady the elf should he need help.

Taako gives his shoulder a squeeze before standing properly again and letting go. "Of course I would come," he answers, tilting his head to look up at Kravitz through thick lashes. He's entirely too much of an open book for his own good. "I'd much rather be invited by you than by boneboy up there. Just met and he wouldn't keep his hands off me! Real classy guy."

He taps on the body drawer at his level, not moving away from Kravitz. "I bet you haven't even used these for any sick photo ops. I'd shove Angus in here for a photo so fast."

The joke loosens the knot in this throat, and Kravitz is thankful for it; he really is too much of an open book for his own good (although he doesn't know that Taako thought that, the writer is using convenient parallels). "I'll have a word with him later about his manners," he says, clicking his tongue to show his disapproval.

"Please don't shove your.....ward into one of these," he says, not really sure what to call Angus since he's pretty sure the boy isn't Taako's son, at least not in any biological or legal sense. "I don't have the keys, so we'd be shit out of luck and he'd be stuck in there until the locksmith arrived." It's much easier to focus on the prospect of locking children into the body drawers than the fact that Taako is still so close to him, warm and smelling faintly of some floral perfume that Kravitz really likes. It's nice.

"Woah there, ward is a bit of a strong word, carries some responsibility to it. I don't know I'd call the kid my ward," he says quickly. There is a lot of responsibility in his relationship with Angus, which he tries not to focus on. He doesn't want to fuck the kid up, which means he shouldn't be in his life at all, but he also realizes how much it would fuck him up if he just up and left. "He's just a nerd I'm helping with magic. I guess he's my student, if anything."

"But yeah, maybe not so great to lock a kid in a body drawer. Now, Magnus or Merle..." He smirks like he's seriously considering a way to pull it off. Both of the men would be grossed out by it, but he'd bet money that Magnus would freak out.

"Sorry, I was getting kind of a Batman and Robin vibe from you two, which is why I went with ward," Kravitz explains, a little amused by how vehemently Taako denies any sort of responsibility for Angus. The two had seemed thick as thieves when he saw them outside his house, and it's sweet to know that the elf is teaching him or hanging out with him or whatever he wants to classify it as. "You're a wizard?" he asks, looking surprised.

"So long as I can claim plausible deniability," Kravitz says saintly, looking up at the ceiling. "I don't want your boss to sue me for wrongful endangerment on the job."

"Guess that hasn't really come up, huh?" Taako reaches into his pocket and after a moment pulls his wand out of what should be an impossible space. The wand tapers to a point, the handle gold with ornate designs that are repeated two other spaces on the otherwise pearlescent wand. "Great Wizard Taako, at your service."

"I'll come up with a distraction for you," he says. He can think of a number of ways he could distract Kravitz. He can think of a number of very, very fun ways. "Besides, it's hardly endangerment when I could open the lock."

Kravitz looks surprised, but then just quietly happy, like he's thrilled to have gotten another tidbit of information about Taako. "Your wand is really interesting," he says, leaning a bit closer to see better in the dim light of the room. At least he knows better than to touch. "It's gorgeous." It's gold and intricate, definitely not something a novice wizard would be carrying around with them. "What school do you focus in?"

Kravitz can also think of a few fun ways Taako could distract him, and while they're mostly innocent thoughts (cooking, holding hands, and if he's allowed to be racy, kissing), it's still enough to make his ears go pink. "I think he could still win a lawsuit since it's my fault he ended up in that situation to begin with."

"Isn't it a beauty?" He bites his lip when Kravitz leans in, glad for the wand in his hands to keep him from getting touchy. He holds his wand up for Kravitz to get a better look at it, but not enough to dissuade him from where he's moved closer. "Transmutation is the name of my game, my man."

He's really biting his lip when he notices the flush of Kravitz's ears. He doesn't even bother trying to filter himself as he says, "Depending on how I've distracted you, I think he might find out and forget about all that nasty body drawer business in favor of being the busybody he is."

"It really is, it's very unique," Kravitz says, smiling a little. "It suits you." Not just because it's unique, but because it's elegant and beautiful, both of which are words he would use to describe the elf standing in front of him. Admitting that would be a little too candid, though, so he doesn't. "Oh, that's impressive. It's not an easy area to work in, from my understanding."

Now it's not just his ears that are red, but his cheeks as well, but somehow Kravitz doesn't immediately straighten up and back up. "Well, even if he didn't....depending on how you distracted me, it would be worth the lawsuit," he says, voice hushed and a little shy.

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