ArchivedLogs:Unpolarizing

Unpolarizing
Dramatis Personae Josiah, Sebastian
In Absentia	2014-04-06 '
Location <NYC> Dogtown - Midtown East
A small nook of a joint in Midtown, Dogtown is decorated with little thought to class or style. Cheerful, with black and white tiled flooring, bright red tables, bright yellow walls, menus plastered on peeling sheets over the counter, the walls are papered in an assortment of photographs -- smiling patrons who hold records for successfully eating six or more hot dogs in one one-hour sitting. The menu here is simple and solid -- hot dogs both beef or vegan with a huge array of toppings, fries, slaw, chili. It's not haute cuisine but the dogs are good enough to draw large crowds, especially late at night. Lunch hour in Midtown. The streets are seeing heavy traffic as office buildings dispense of their workers for reasons of nourishment. Josiah is among them. He's left the New Yorker offices with a rumbling stomach after a late morning and little in the way of breakfast. "Listen, try and square away some time for me," he says into his cell phone. "Fifteen minutes is all I need. I want to pitch the story today, because I want to get it started today. Yeah? There's a drink with your name on it. See you soon." He hangs up and pushes his way into Dogtown. Inside, it's busy, but nowhere near as much as it is at night. Settling into the line, his eyes are glued to his cell screen, checking email or something less important. Who knows. His fingers are busy fiddling with the screen, though. There's a small blue teenager making his way into the store behind Josiah -- a very distinctively familiar /face/, to be sure, though there's no hint of recognition in /Sebastian's/ eyes as he slips into line behind Josiah. He's dressed casually bland -- a new black sweatshirt that reads 'HERBIVORE' in a yellow cross over the chest, a plain grey tee, a pair of jeans, sneakers. There's an ID badge clipped to his jeans though at the moment it's turned around so the name can't be seen. The teenager is fiddling restlessly with the chain of a wallet hanging from his pocket, the links clinking quietly together as he stretches up onto his toes to see over the people in front of him, /invariably/ all taller than his rather diminutive height. It's as he's stretching up (and just a little closer to Josiah) that he very /abruptly/ rocks back down onto his heels, pitch-black eyes widening and his nostrils flaring in sudden sniff. There's a brief startled growl that rumbles up out of him, gills flutter-flaring alongside his neck, though this is immediately followed by a deep blush. "Woah. You --" He presses his lips together suddenly, eyes skimming over Josiah in /intent/ appraisal. Josiah thumbs his phone a bit more before dropping it into the pocket of his blazer. He doesn't pay much mind to whoever comes in after him, focusing instead on the menu, though he and the guy on the side of the counter both already know what he's after. It's Sebastian's voice that breaks his admittedly limited concentration. Turning, he eyes the smaller mutant, blinking a few times slowly. "Woah," he mimics. "You? Nice to see you." He grins, looking him up and down, noting the ID card and the casual dress. "Me?" Sebastian's gills flutter faster, calming only a moment later. He gives Josiah a /puzzled/ look, his nose twitching again. "You're with him --" There's a note, almost, of fear in his voice, but it quiets, giving way instead to just confusion. "-- Nice to see /me/?" His head tilts to one side, eyes flicking up over Josiah. "I'm sorry, sir, what?" Josiah's own confusion can easily be read across his face. "I should ask you the same question. With whom? I came here alone." He laughs, despite the akward turn of events, and gives Sebastian a closer look. "We've met before. No? Maybe?" He has only run into Shane a couple of times, both brief, and is likely only noticing certain traits in Sebastian. "Trib, he -- you --" Sebastian still sounds flustered, a little -- thrown off kilter. He lifts a hand to smoothe it against his fluttering gills, drawing in a quick breath to steady himself. "Alone. Alone, good." This seems to /noticeably/ reassure him, and he offers Josiah a shy closed-lipped smile. "Have we? Where, I don't --" He shakes his head, his cheeks still flushed dark, their blue tinting near to purple. "No, apologies, sir, you might have. Possibly met my clone? Also tiny? Blue? Toothy? Curses a lot?" His hand brushes down over his clothing; it twists the ID badge clipped to his beltloop back around. Sebastian Holland-Zedner, says the name. Stark Industries. Senior Researcher, though he -- doesn't actually look like he's out of high school, for all it's difficult, really, to gauge things like age or even gender markers in his distinctly inhuman features. Timidly, he offers a clawed webbed hand forward for a handshake. "I'm B. If you /think/ you've met me it was probably Shane. I don't know any other people who look like me." "Right, your clone. Of course that was it," Josiah says dryly. "No need to apologize, it was definitely not you I met. You're polite." He reaches out and down and take the webbed hand in his own, giving it a firm shake. "Nice to meet you, B. I'm Josiah. That's quite a nametag you've got there for someone...your age?" He's not sure, clearly, and when the line moves he's happy to move with it, a few steps closer to lunch. "Oh, and what's that about Trib?" Sebastian ducks his head sheepishly. "Apologies, sir," he says again, nose crinkling up as he rubs at the back of his neck; his other hand returns the handshake firm-strong, his skin considerably cooler to the touch than an average person's though thankfully not clammy-wet like the fish-look might suggest. "He's my -- twin, we're um. Identical. It /is/ pretty much cloning, though. Just accidental in-utero cloning? Not the kind with sheep or anything. One egg, same genes. More or less. -- Where do you know Shane from?" The blushing doesn't cease when Josiah comments on his nametag; he tips his gaze back up to give the older man another shy smile. "I just turned seventeen. I -- kind of. Got the job by, um, accident," he demurs. "Josiah? Nice to meet you too." There's another rapid flutter of gills, and his eyes shift quickly away at Trib's name, locking fixedly on the menu board. A slow hard swallow rolls down his throat. "Oh. You, um. You know him? We've, um, we've met. A while. A while ago." "Yes, I'm familiar with process. Cloning is kind of...an interest of mine." There's a glimmer in Josiah's eyes when he says this, as he suddenly seems to take more of an interest in the conversation. "What exactly does a seventeen-year-old senior researcher do over at Stark, anyways?" The line moves once more, and Josiah with it. Up to the counter now, he asks for his usual, and the guys on the other end get on it. "And as for Shane, we've just bumped into each other a couple times. Not a forgetable guy that one." He doesn't touch the Trib subject, seeing how it makes Sebastian uncomfortable. For some reason. "Really?" This actually puts a more animated light in Sebastian's eyes. "What do you do? Are you in biology?" He bounces slightly on his toes, following Josiah up towards the counter with a more interested look over the older man. "Where do /you/ work? -- Nnnoo," he agrees, then, "Shane kind of leaves an impression. Um, I --" Shy once more, he hesitates, turning his attention instead to ordering food -- despite his tiny size he orders a /dozen/ chili dogs, hold the buns. And one root beer. His eyes flit back to Josiah once he's paid. "I lead a team in -- robotics and A.I. is what I do. Mostly. Though at the moment my team's working on refining the algorithms for the new self-driving vehicle." Josiah gives Sebastian a curious look at hearing his order, but doesn't mention it. Instead, he shakes his head and says, "No, I work for the New Yorker. Genetics is just a hobby of mine. It's not like I have a lab of my own or anything." He stands off to the side to wait for his order, listening to Sebastian talk about robotics and A.I. That casts a certain look on his face, one of deep thought. "Huh. That sounds really interesting, actually." "It's /wicked/ interesting," Sebastian agrees brightly. "I'm pretty much the luckiest. Most freaks can barely get a job and I have one that's basically a playground where I get to experiment with everything I love." He drops back away from the cash register to wait for his order by the counter, too, toying once more with his wallet chain. He bobs back up onto his toes, looking over Josiah again. "The New Yorker? /Really/? /Cool/. Do you write or what? About what?" For a moment he smiles, self-consciously closed-lipped as he hazards a hopeful guess: "Genetics?" "I do write, but not on genetics. At least not right now. I'm pitching a story today on the lofts, actually. I'm sure you know about it. Terrible thing." Josiah's order is up, and he reaches across for a footlong kosher loaded with everything pickled. And a bottle of water. He eyes a table that's freed up and motions with his head toward it, inviting Sebastian along. "So it's your playground you say. And if you're interested in genetics, cloning, they would let you have fun with it?" Sebastian's eyes widen, the smile draining from his face. "-- I lived there," he tells Josiah quietly. "Me and my brothers and my dads and. Most of my friends, a -- a lot of my friends got really badly --" He blushes, looking down at his feet as he takes his massive order to follow after Josiah. "-- or killed." He is quieter as he sets his pile-o-hot-dogs down on the table. His gills are fluttering again, rapidly, and this puts an unsteady hitch in his breathing which in turn carries over to a faint breathless quaver to his voice. "Oh -- oh, they -- might, actually. I mostly like the gadgets, though." Josiah sits and glances down at his hot dog, looking quite serious. "Hey, I'm really sorry to hear that. I've run into more than a few people who were affected by it. Seems like that building connected a lot of people in town." He pauses in a moment of reflection, then works on unwrapping and opening the lid of his water bottle. "And that's fine, I was just curious. I'm sure the toys are much more fun." "It connected a lot of mutants in town," Sebastian agrees with a small shrug. "There's not many places that will rent to us, so I think we tend to congregate? Which -- I guess, um." His hairless ridged brows rumple together. "Kind of painted a big target on the place, between my Pa and Ryan Black especially." He shrugs again, picking up a plastic fork to stab at one of his hot dogs since it has no bun and the chili makes it /kind/ of messy. "What are you going to write about it? Is that the kind of thing you /usually/ write about?" Josiah eyes the plate of food and then looks up to Sebastian, shaking his head. "No, this sort of marks a turn in my career." He lifts his hot dog and takes a small bite of it, trying to let too much of the toppings fall onto the plate in front of him. After chewing and swalling, he continues, "I'm not sure exactly what will come of it, but I want to try and give readers something new to think about. I want to shift the focus away from the crime and show the ways mutants and humans were equally affected by what went down. There's been to much polarization in the press lately. Mutants on one end of things, humans on the other." "Woah." Perhaps it's the topic that surprises Sebastian or perhaps just: "Your magazine's actually going to go for that?" For a moment his face lights in a pleased smile. "That's impressive. Most --" He crinkles his nose up, shrugging a shoulder as he takes another bite, chews it over, swallows. "Most places /want/ polarizing, I think. Controversy gets everyone good and riled up. But -- I mean. Yeah. You could see it just in my family alone if you look. One of my dads is human and one's a mutant and they're both just as homeless now. And the whole building -- I mean, /I/ could tell you exactly every one of the dead who was mutant and who wasn't but I'm pretty sure the bombers couldn't. It's all -- kind of. Dumb." Josiah wags a finger in the air, then reachers to pull out a napkin from one of the little holders at the end of the table. "They haven't gone for it, yet. And while it's my /aim/ to write more stories like that, I'll probably pitch it a little differently. But it's possible. When I came out as a mutant in the office, I half expected them to fire me, but they actually gave me a little bit more freedom in what I write." He wipes the edge of his mouth and folds the napkin over twice. "I don't know if dumb's the right word, but I get what you're saying. And listen, if this is a sore subject for you, we can set it aside." "Oh! You --" Sebastian's eyes widen in a little bit of surprise here, too; he looks over Josiah curiously, then drops his eyes shyly back to the table. "{Sorry}," comes in habitual Vietnamese, "I didn't -- know that. Right. That's -- actually really cool. I should," he says with a tiny crooked smile, "start reading the New Yorker, maybe. It's neat to hear about places being -- well, neat. Um, good luck, I guess? With -- pitching it? Do you need --" He fidgets a little awkwardly, offering uncertainly: "I don't know, people to talk to there? About it? I guess you -- possibly-probably already have. People. Who lived there." Josiah munches on the hot dog a bit more and nods. "Yep, I'm a mutant, too," he says after downing that bite. "And thank you. If I get the go ahead...who knows?" He clears his throat and moves in on the water. "Look, I feel like I might have upset you, and I'm sorry for that. Can I buy you lunch again sometime, with the promise of no dour talk? I bet you like steak," he says, with a grin. "Is that why the interest in genetics?" Sebastian is plowing his way through his ridiculous pile of meat while Josiah talks, sharp teeth making quick work of his hot dogs. He gets himself a napkin, too, dabbing at his lips in oddly contrasting delicacy given the way he's been devouring the hot dogs. He presses his fingertips to his lips, stifling a giggle. "I'm okay," he tells Josiah, "I mean I'm not /upset/ -- exactly. But I /do/ like steak. So I won't say no to /that/. I should maybeprobably get back to work. Sometimes," he leans slightly in to confide this, huge-wide eyed like it's a big secret, "they /actually/ like me to be in the office and /do/ work." Josiah smirks and goes wide-eyed to, playfully. "You and me both, kid." He reaches into his blazer pocket and pulls out a small metal case. Inside are his business cards. He takes one out and hands it over to Sebastian. "Call me when you're free and I'll answer that other question. Maybe science will be a less prickly subject to get into." Returning his card case to its home, he rises with his hot in one hand, water bottle in the other. "Back to work then," he says, with a wink. Sebastian takes the business card, glancing over it and then slipping it into his pocket. "Look forward to it." He's polished off most of the rest of the hot dogs -- there's still two left, and after standing to throw out his trash he picks these up in their cardboard cartons, together with his root beer. "Back to work," he agrees with a quick-warm smile, turning for the door. But he turns back towards the table a few steps later, hesitant, his teeth pressing down against his lip. "Sir?" His voice is quieter, cautious-apologetic. "If you're -- spending time," he chooses his words carefully, gills starting to flutter again, "with Trib. Just -- just be careful, alright? You seem really nice." And only with /this/, now, head ducking low, does he start back for the door for real.