ArchivedLogs:The Things We Fear

The Things We Fear
Dramatis Personae Iolaus, Shane
In Absentia	8 December, 2012 A spot of nitpicking.
Location <NYC> Spin - Harlem
Half record store, half music shop, Spin is a music lovers' haven. The record side of the store holds everything from vintage vinyl to the newest releases, both new and secondhand, with miscellaneous paraphernalia -- posters, t-shirts, pins -- held in bins along one wall. On the other side of the store, dedicated musicians can find a wealth of sheet music, from modern rock guitar tabs to classical violin and piano pieces. Behind the counter, higher priced rare items are secured away behind the glass. In a departure from the usual bent of this type of store, the shelves are kept meticulously organized. The evening has just started and dark has fallen over the streets of the city that never sleeps - insofar as dark ever visits New York City's hustle and bustle in any large degree. People bustle down the streets and dart in and out of stores that line the streets of Harlem, doing their evening shopping or enjoying a nice night out on the town. Though it is December, the temperature is surprisingly moderate, and nothing that any hardy Yankee can't deal with clad only in a light windbreaker. Inside Spin, there are few customers, only a couple over in one corner browsing through some sheet music, and one man whose fingers are running over the shelves of CDs, looking carefully through the techno section. He is dressed in a dark red shirt and a black pair of jeans that hug quite tight to his legs and thighs. A leather belt holds up his pants - not that they need much encouragement, tight as they are - and has several metallic studs lining the rim of it. His hair is tousled, and though he is clearly no longer a teenager, his appearance makes him look somewhat younger than he actually is - mid 20s, at a guess. The opening of the door brings in a draft of cool-but-not-freezing, wafting in to curl through the room before the front door closes again. Few people though the store contains, the boy who slips in is likely to draw a few looks, with his deep blue skin and webbed clawed hands. He has made little effort to hide them, his short sleeved shirt composed of bright-coloured blocks of red and yellow and silver, his pants tight black and hung with black straps, his shoes blocky and red. Though he carries a long-sleeved jacket, he hasn't put it /on/. It earns him a wide-then-narrow-eyed glare from the teenager behind the counter, who he ignores in favor of sauntering in further. He drapes his black coat over one arm, wandering past the vinyl to head towards the sheet music. He /does/ stop, though, at the look from one of the people browsing there -- not narroweye glare but panic-edged-wary. The teenager flashes the couple a brief-bright (and veryvery toothy) smile, but doesn't approach, leaning up against one row of CDs to rifle absently through them. Classical. "You're losing a stud," he comments, offhand and apparently directed towards the Fritz Kreisler he is fingering. It is not immediately that the techno-browsing man looks up, despite the ding of the bell on the door and the draft floating through the room. At the voice, however, he does look up, and as he turns to respond, he stops. His eyes widen slightly as he looks the younger man up and down once, an eyebrow raising. His eyes are curious and appraising, but no look of fear or disgust reaches into his face. His eyes turn down to look at his belt, fingers running from stud to stud to find the loose one. "So I am," he says, picking briefly at it to test the strength of the attachment remaining. "I will have to..." he pauses, frowning. "Hammer it, I guess. I am not sure, truly, how one would go about reattaching one of them." he says, with a soft chuckle. He turns slightly towards the other man, even as his attention flicks back towards the CDs once more. "Thank you for the warning." The teenager doesn't look back at the other man as he is examined, instead turning the CD over to read its back. There is a pair of black wristcuffs on his wrists, studded similarly to the man's belt. He is silent, briefly, looking over the CD. Replacing it, he turns, hip leaning up against the rows of music as he lifts a hand. Webbed fingers beckon, fingertips curling forward in quick-twitch indication: come. Iolaus looks up, curiously, at the other man. He takes a few steps forward, unafraid, raising one eyebrow. "Yeah?" he asks, voice with just a hint of a Boston accent twitching at the edges of his words. A CD comes with him, two fingers still wrapped around it from where he had pulled it from the shelf. VAST, by VAST. Shane steps forward, dropping his hands to -- unbuckle the other man's pants. Perhaps not the most appropriate thing to do to a stranger, really, but he does with no sense of bashfulness, tugging one end free of two belt loops in order to free up the underside of the leather. He presses at the unhinged stud, pushing its sharp spines harder through the leather until it sits snugly once more. One sharp claw hooks underneath each tine, wiggling until they are more prominently visible, and then he presses each in in turn, curling the short sharp silver hard against the leather. This process finished, he tucks the belt back neatly into its loops. But does not buckle it again. He returns to browsing music, with a slantwise glance flicker-flashed over towards the couple at the sheet music. Iolaus' eyes widen as the teenager goes for his belt, and he watches his hands - and claws - carefully as he works on it. As the younger man's hands approach his belt again, one of his darts down to thumb gently over the surface of the younger man's skin once, smile sparkling on his lips. "Thanks." he says, looking down at his belt with an amused expression. He buckles it back up, cinching it down tight against his waist with the soft sound of metal on metal. He takes a step back from the teenager and turns back to where he had left off, fingers flicking through the CDs. Shane pulls his hand back /abruptly/ from the touch, his shoulders hunching quick-tense. "You could hurt yourself that way." He reaches for another CD -- Joshua Bell playing Prokofiev -- and relaxes just as quick as he'd tensed. "Don't you know," he tacks on, with a quick curl of closed-mouthed-smile, "we're dangerous." Iolaus laughs at this and shakes his head. "Yes, yes. You're all so dangerous, because the rest of us aren't?" he drawls, crossing his arms over his chest and tapping the plastic-wrapped CD against his arm, bemused. "People are scared of what they don't understand. I understand evolution just fine, and I know that there's fuck-all to be afraid of." he says, tilting his head to one side and leaning against the rack of CDs as he glances over the teenager. "Classical music. Very dangerous." he says, voice dry and dripping with sarcasm. "Whatever will I do." "People are also scared of things that can kill them." Shane looks very absorbed in his scrutiny of the CD. Maybe it doesn't meet with his approval; he returns it soon in favour of another. More violin. "Do dangerous people only listen to rock? I mean, I'm not gonna kill you with Corigliano. It's dumb as /shit/ to say there's fuck-all to be afraid of, though. This is New York. I'm afraid of getting shot and I'm sure as shit afraid of someone who might kill me just by thinking about it." "People have been killing each other for thousands of years before your subspecies came along." Iolaus says, softly. "If I tallied all of the murders in this country, I bet lightning kills more people than mutants do." he challenges. "To say nothing of heart disease, cancer, car accidents... if you want to start examining all of the ways you could possibly die doing anything, you're never going to do anything at all. I'll be scared of the things that are most likely to kill me. Everything else..." The doctor waves a hand, dismissively. "No importa." "Saying you're not actively afraid of something doesn't mean there's fuck-all to be afraid /of/," Shane answers the challenge with a dismissive snort. "Car accidents are scary. Cancer is scary. I don't spend all my time fretting about it but it's sure as hell something worth being scared /of/. If you value your life at all, anyway." Iolaus gives the other man a firm look and smirks. "That's nit-picking. When I say that there's fuck all to be afraid of, I mean that inherently it is nothing to fear. Unlike car accidents, say, and cancer. Could a mutant attack me and murder me? Of course. But so could a human. In fact, I think it's far more likely. Does that mean I should be afraid of all people?" He shakes his head, thumb hooking into his belt and grinning. "Perhaps, if they're threatening me. Otherwise..." "It's not nitpicking, what you said was just /stupid as fuck/," Shane answers with a shrug of one shoulder. "'I understand evolution just fine, and I know that there's fuck-all to be afraid of.' One thing doesn't have jackshit to do with the other. Understanding evolution just means you're not one of those dumbass nutjobs who thinks we're possessed by demons or a curse drummed up by witches or God's wrath called down to punish the gays. Understanding evolution /doesn't/ make an uncontrolled pyrokinetic or, shit, a /controlled/ one who's /pissed/ at you any /safer/." His solid-black eyes are difficult to track in their movements, no pupils visible to tell which way they have shifted. His head is tipped down, though, replacing another CD, picking up a different one. "And yeah. You probably should be afraid of most people. People are dangerous as hell. I wouldn't want most of them armed, whether that's guns or," his smile is thin here, quick, "claws. Or telekinesis." "Perhaps. But, absent a few extraordinary cases, I am not convinced the danger is any more than anything else. Sure, theoretically, an uncontrolled pyrokenetic could be very hazardous, especially if you are too close. So, too, though, could be a drunk driver. And there are a lot more of those out there." he drawls, straightening up and turning back to his CDs. "When I say that there's fuck-all to be afraid of from mutants, I mean... the X-gene doesn't pose me any risk. People with it might, but that's the people, not the subspecies." "Who's nitpicking now?" Shane's smile vanishes, replaced with a bland sort of impassiveness. He focuses his attention on the CDs, studiously Not Looking at the customers just coming in through the door -- and turning right back around again. He's not looking at the cashier, either, though the cashier is certainly looking at /him/. "It is an important distinction, I think. Saying the opposite is the difference between slicing it into 'us' and 'them', versus recognizing that - again, in most cases - they are just like us, and the ones that mean us harm would likely have meant us harm anyway." Iolaus says, pulling another CD out from the shelf. Homework, by Daft Punk. He turns it over and runs a finger down the case, along the list of songs, and then places it back in its spot on the shelf. "Mmm." he murmurs to himself, a noise that is the audible equivalent of a frown. "It's a stupid distinction. And a really naive one. A lot of mutations are a freaking powder keg, and the only good pretending otherwise is going to do is eventually rid the world of one more dumbass." Shane stuffs the CD he is looking at back where it came from; he turns his same bland look on Iolaus for a brief moment. "Almost as stupid and naive as thinking it's /not/ 'us' and 'them'." "The 'us' and the 'them' shouldn't be divided along unimportant lines. That's happened time and time again throughout history, and each time it has happened it hasn't turned out well for particularly everyone. There are lines that divide us, no question." Iolaus says, evenly, picking another CD out of the racks and turning his gaze back onto Shane. "The question is, which lines? I think we would choose different ones, if asked." "Only an unimportant line to you," Shane answers. He straightens and shakes out his coat, turning a furrowed-brow glare on the cashier who is already glaring at him. "You might choose different ones. I'm sure as fuck not one of /you/." Iolaus chuckles, unoffended. "Perhaps not." he says, voice a light drawl as he moves to step towards the cashier, placing the CDs down on the counter and turning back towards the younger man. "But, I think, you and I have more in common than we have not in common. In fact, I suspect there are people who look a lot more like me than you do with whom I have much less in common." He dips his hand into a pocket, pulling out his wallet and opening it to pull out a credit card for the cashier. Shane does not answer this, only watching the man uncomfortably as Iolaus approaches the counter. Shrugging quickly into his jacket, he casts one more look towards the couple standing by the sheet music but then just turns to hurry back out into the cool evening air. Iolaus' eyes follow the other man to the door, and as he slips through it, he turns back to the cashier. A few moments later, he, too, is heading out of the door and back onto the streets of Harlem.