ArchivedLogs:Welcoming

Welcoming
Dramatis Personae Bruce, Melinda, Shane
In Absentia	2015-08-16 "Begging your pardon, would you happen to have a twin?"
Location <NYC> Montagues - SoHo
Montagues harkens back to the day when SoHo was filled to the brim with artists, with its mismatched furniture, all plush and decorated heavily with carved wood, but remains trendy enough to keep its newer patrons by making sure that furniture is clean, in good repair and inviting. The antique tables all have been reinforced to seem less creaky. The real draw of the cafe is the smell: fresh roasted coffee mingles with perfectly steeped teas. Spices from crisp pastries mingle with the tang of clotted cream but don't overwhelm too much the scent of chalk on the menu boards. The cafe at Montagues has slowly become the star of the normally coffee driven restaurant. Sandwiches styled to a person's wishes is advertized at the door, offering an array of specialty meats and cheeses as well as a completely segregated vegetarian section that allows for vegan sandwiches, including a star 'blue oyster mushroom' sandwich. Mel is behind the counter working on fruit drinks to compliment the menu of the week. She's added a shiso lemonade along side a cinnamon variety to her usual repertoire of comforting coffee drinks. The store head manager looks a little worn, but her energy is good. She's standing at the counter mushing up herbs in a mortar and pestle to give the customers a look at drink making in progress. Shouldering his way in with both hands full of shopping bags, Bruce looks just a touch dazed. He squints at the menu board, shuffles a little closer to the counter, and squints at it again. His wavy black hair sticks out here and there, wind-tossed. Black-rimmed glasses hang from the pocket of his pale green Oxford shirt (collar open, sleeves neatly rolled to elbows), and his khakis look severely worn, though still clean and pressed. "Ah, excuse me." He does not raise his voice, but attempts to gain Melinda's attention by bobbing his head in slightly comical fashion. "Can I get a ah, blue oyster mushroom sandwich? And whatever coffee you'd recommend?" "The monsoon Malabar is excellent." Shane's voice comes from a little behind Bruce; he's not just entering but getting up with his own mug from a table in the corner where he's been ensconced. Perhaps for a refill. The tiny blue sharkpup is dressed, today, in neatly pressed linen slacks and neatly polished saddle shoes, a lightweight thigh-length mandarin collared tunic on top in pale ice-blue with silver embroidery at the collar and cuffs. He is kind of PRESUMPTUOUS about sliding behind the counter, giving Mel a broadly toothy grin as he does. "I still make a mean sandwich." Melinda opens her mouth to speak about the coffee selection when Shane speaks up for her. Instead of being upset about it, she just chuckles lightly and glances over at Bruce and shrugs. "He's right," she offers, turning to grab a mug as someone else scurries off to start the sandwich making. "Did you want room for cream?" she asks as she pours, turning to look over her shoulder. Shane's presence behind the counter is not a cause for concern. "If you want to volunteer your time, I would not at all complain." Bruce blinks, does a double-take at the small blue shark. "Oh! Sure, I'll have that, thank you. Large, and no cream, please--though, if you have non-dairy milk products, save a little room for that?" He starts to lift a hand to indicate just how little, then looks down at his bags with faint incredulity. "Little bit," he reiterates, in lieu of gestural demonstration. His dark brown eyes skid back to Shane. "So ah, how are you doing?" Shane sets his cup down behind the counter, ducking briefly back to scrub his hands before he gets started on sandwich prep. "Me? Tired of filling out forms. You know they ask you to fill out, like, at /least/ seventeen /thousand/ different forms before you start college? Sandwich making is way preferable, honestly." He gives Mel a sudden look of exaggerated suspicion. "... unless you want me to /document/ this somehow. In triplicate." But then it is back to Bruce, with another grin. "How's about you?" "We have a house made almond milk and a house made hazelnut milk," Melinda offers as she finishes the pour. She leaves the cup on the counter as she half kneels to get into the under counter fridge to pull out the thermal containers of said milks. She rises to Shane's grumbles on paperwork, grimacing a little bit. She glances back at Bruce to judge his reaction to a small, blue shark preparing his sandwich. "No, I think I'm good. I may still have a W2 on file. At most, I'd need a signature." She gives Bruce a small smile before asking, "Six fifty?" "I do not envy you the paperwork!" Bruce shakes his head, but also smiles, if a little shyly. "Honestly, I enjoy documentation--I find it relaxing, when it's data from a project I'm working on. But bureaucracy just sucks the fun out of it for me." He shuffles in place, glancing down at his bags again as if he just does not quite know what to do with them. "I'm...settling in, I suppose? Still a little overwhelmed--just went shopping. There was...a lot. Of shop. Oh! I met your father, and found him most illuminating." His brows furrow faintly. "Ah, right. Pun. Unintentional, though. I just mean...I enjoyed his company, and valued his perspective." For a moment he blinks at Mel, uncomprehending. "Of course, just a moment, I need to..." He finally does set his bags down to fumble an incongruously bright-colored wallet (purple mylar with neon green edging) out of a rear pocket and produce a ten-dollar bill for her. "Thank you, and hazelnut milk sounds wonderful." "Pfft. No signature needed. S'not like you're /paying/ me. Unless you want to pay me under the table?" Shane's hairless brows waggle. "I accept hugs. Or --" Or what, is left hanging, because he's turning back to look at Bruce with a somewhat /bemused/ expression at the man's answer. "Ye-e-e-ah, my dad's pretty goddamn radiant who the fuck are you?" His tone is more puzzled than accusatory, here. First looking uncertainly at Bruce, then at Mel. "-- Did we get a new Commoner and I missed it? I didn't think anyone was scheduled to move in till September." Melinda raises an eyebrow at the wallet, but it just causes a warmer smile to pull at her lips. She inserts the order into the cash register, then gets change when the drawer pops out. "I.. haven't seen anyone else moving in lately. Maybe he just... Did you just interview for a new apartment?" She pauses in talking about Bruce to talking /to/ him about the situation. "I apologize if we seem a bit - intense. It's just, well, Jax has kind of had a rough time as of late and I might be feeling a little protective and you're talking like you know Shane. He's a gregarious guy, but if he doesn't remember you, it's a little... I don't know how to say it." Bruce's mouth falls open. He leaves his change on the counter and pulls the glasses from his pocket, failing to don them on the first two attempts. Stares at Shane /through/ the lenses. His expression suggests that what he sees does not /decrease/ his confusion. "Ah sor--um, I'm...Bruce Banner?" He speaks soft and quick, his face flushing red. "I started last week--at Stark. I ran into you on a testing floor and you introduced me--well, email-introduced me--to Jax oh..." He trails off, looking slightly less embarrassed than thoughtful now. "Begging your pardon, would you happen to have a twin? Or..." "Well, /everyone/ knows Jax, I don't pay /that/ much attention to every /one/ of my dad's friends," Shane hedges thoughtfully to Mel, slowly returning to sandwich prep as Bruce continues speaking. The prominent ridge of his brow lifts again, mouth slowly opening. Then closing again. "I did? You'd think I'd /remember/ doing that, yeah? Or, like, ever getting hired by Stark in the first place, /jesus/ I must be busy in my sleep." His head tips down, a small hum in his throat as he dresses and then plates the sandwich, tucking a crisp pickle onto the side of the plate next to a very small drizzle of dressing that he has shaped into the form of a fish. His small stature means that he has to rise up onto his tiptoes to slide the plate across the display glass to Bruce. "Or --? Yeeeah, /two/ blue shark-people seems totally plausible. Maybe someone was cosplaying me I /am/ pretty fantastic? Were they a snappy dresser?" "Shane, seriously." Melinda looks at the sharktwin with an exasperated expression. "I'm trying to keep customers here." She turns back to Bruce, her expression melting in concern, as contrite as she can be, professionally speaking. "I am so... I apologize for my friend here. He's got a sense of humor and he's trying to be funny. Please, don't take it too - Oh, hell." She draws her lips into her mouth to wet them. "Um. Can I get you a dessert? We have vegan pastries. How do you feel about a bear claw?" Bruce's eyes flick to the door, and for a moment he appears to seriously consider fleeing. But, sandwich. "I ah...she--dressed snappily, yes?" He sound exceptionally uncertain of this, though. "I apologize, please forget I said anything. Thank you." This last seems to refer to the sandwich on the plate he has just lifted, though now he looks at a loss to pick up his bags again. He glances back up at Mel, startled, turning redder. "Bear claw? Oh, no it's quite all right. I oughtn't to have assumed..." Setting down the plate, he loops the shopping bags over his wrists, then reaches to precariously take both sandwich and coffee. Shane presses the backs of his knuckles to his lips, stifling a smirk. He pours himself a fresh coffee before ducking back around from behind the counter. "If it helps any," he says to Mel -- not /quite/ apologetically -- "the sandwich I just made is fucking /awesome/ so it'll probably be worth a repeat visit. Do you need a hand, dude, you look kind of overloaded." He's pulling out his wallet to leave money -- exact change! /someone/ knows how much the coffees here cost -- for the coffee he just got himself, but then turning to nod towards Bruce's sandwich. "B's my twin. At Stark, yeah. She got all the genius half of the egg, I just got the attitude." Melinda winces as Shane speaks again, shaking her head slowly. "Love you, Shane, but I had forgotten what it was like to have you behind the counter." She stuffs the money Shane handed over into the register and purses her lips. "Like I said, you are fine. Shane... just... I think he loves that aspect of being a twin and is getting all he can out of it while he still can." She inhales then relaxes a little. "He is also quite nice guy, once you get to know him. Courteous when he wants to be." Bruce's gaze bounces from Mel to Shane, then back again. Freezes in place, uncertain. Looks down at Shane again. "I see. You look...very alike, I mean, you /are/ identical twins, then? But usually there are small differences..." He looks a little less distraught now. "Of course, I do not know B all that well, I'm sure those better acquainted with one or both of you could differentiate you, I--should stop talking." He does, for a moment, then adds, "Though yes, I could use a hand, else I might spill this coffee." To Melinda, with a slightly rueful smile, "No one's fault but mine that I'm slow on the uptake! Or not very good at detecting a joke. I ah--don't have much of a social life." "Same egg," Shane confirms brightly. "I'm four minutes older, so I've had longer to develop my excellent sense of style." He reaches to nab Bruce's coffee, carting it off to a nearby table. "We're easy as hell to tell apart mooost of the time but even our dads --" There's a brief pause, a small flutter of gills, before he plows on ahead just as blithely, "-- can't do it in some situations. And I'm a /perfect/ gentleman which is why Mel is /trying/ to say that she misses me sorely and holds a moment of silence every day about losing her most charming employee." He tucks himself uninvited into an extra seat at the table he has claimed for Bruce's coffee. "Did you /want/ a social life? I have enough of one for at /least/ five people. New jobs can make it hard to find time, though." "When the joke is at your expense, it is often tougher to recognize it." Mel half frowns as she clasps her hands behind her back, fidgeting. "Oh, certainly. Every day, first thing in the morning, a moment of silence as I miss one of my most passionate baristas and sandwich makers. And to make things worse, he left me to become competition." She inhales deeply and smiles. "I would be careful with his offer of a social life. He'll drag you out dancing or stick you in a room full of board games - oh, worse yet, he might take you rock climbing with friends. It's a dangerous proposal. How are you at swimming?" Bruce follows Shane and lowers his plate carefully to the table before settling the bags down. They appear to contain mostly garment boxes and shoe boxes. "I'd like a social life, as long as I can still retreat into my lab for weeks at a time. As it turns out, though, that's not a good way to way to keep friends." He pauses a beat, then amends, "/Most/ friends. Thank you." This last to Shane--again--as he sits down and picks up his coffee. "I love dancing--tap dance, mostly--and certainly have done my share of board gaming. Rock climbing and swimming, though..." His free hand splays wide and teeters from side to side to indicate iffiness. "Become competition?" He begins saying this to Mel, but then looks at Shane. "Are you starting your cafe?" "You /tap/ dance?" Shane doesn't say this with the incredulity or disdain that might be expected of some teenagers -- just curious, a quick smile on his face. "Woah. That's kind of neat, I'm only good at swing, really. My pa is fantastic but I haven't learned as much as I'd /like/. -- We have a pretty awesome board game night once a week if you need to meet people. Outside of your lab, I mean. People who aren't robots." He picks up his coffee, grinning over the lip of it at Mel. "Not very /much/ competition, honestly. Our target audiences -- don't have /that/ much overlap." To Bruce, a small (proud) nod. "I /started/ my own cafe. Been managing to not-go-bankrupt over a year now. Evolve. Down in the Lower East Side. It's pretty great, if you don't mind freaks." "Well, I really wouldn't recommend a swimming contest against Shane. He's built for it." Melinda looks Bruce up and down in case she missed any gills or fins. "You're ... less so. Not to say that's a good or bad thing. It's just - well, some people are really good at certain things and it's probably not good for a person's ego to challenge them." She turns and finishes her batch of lemonade by putting the bruised leaves into the already prepared beverage, then she puts it in the refrigerator before starting to make herself an iced coffee. "The boardgame night is a lot of fun. And Evolve is great. He's done a good job making it a safe place -- and not sacrificing good service and fine offerings in the least." "I do indeed." Bruce takes a sip of his coffee and nods. "Oh, that's good. I'm going to be in the market for some new dancing shoes, soon. Shouldn't be difficult here." He studies Shane, expression pensive. "'Evolve,' huh?" He takes his glasses off and return them to his shirt pocket. "Food service is a tough industry! Congratulations for surviving the first year--in Manhattan, no less." Then, to Melinda. "I'm not a strong swimmer, but even if I were...I'm not competitive. Well, maybe with some board games." This time Shane's smile is softer -- quicker and a touch shyer and closed-lipped, the resemblance between him and B is even /more/ striking. "Oh -- oh. Thanks, Mel." He tips his smile down into his coffee, claws clicking against the side of his mug. "Evolve. Yeah. Ignore everything google says we /totally/ aren't burned down. Or, like, some kind of fucking mutant cult. It's just coffee." Though he reconsiders after this: "... and tea. And ice cream. And really good soup. Which games?" "There are a lot of competitive board gamers. I mostly go - when I can go - to fill out the ranks. I so very rarely win." Melinda finishes pouring her coffee over eyes and caramel sauce before she moves out from behind the counter and finds a seat to relax in. "Surviving the first year is a bit more of an accomplishment for him. Then again, I knew you could do it." She smiles over at her young protege, before looking back to Bruce. "I don't mean to go on and on. Please, tell us a little about you? You're working at Stark? How is that? Is everything automated? Have they discovered how to make the toilet wipe for you yet?" "Maybe I will go and see for myself sometime." There's a nervous edge to Bruce's voice, but only briefly. "In truth, I'm a bit of a coffee philistine. Too many years of the terrible cheap burnt stuff, I guess. But if you have decent vegan ice cream, I'm sold." He takes a small bite of the sandwich and lifts his eyebrows, impressed. Gives a thumbs-up while he works through it. "You do make a mean sandwich. And I play a mean game of Carcassonne. Pretty okay at Scrabble, too. Played Pandemic with my team--former team, now--and enjoyed that a lot, even when we all died. Though..." He presses his lips into a thin line. "...maybe that game is less appealing here now?" Taking another sip of his coffee, he raises an eyebrow at Melinda. "Me? I'm not very interesting, unless you're really into science, perhaps. My work has been my life, and Stark--kind of indulges that tendency in me. Pretty much everything /is/ automated." He chuckles. "Well, not the toilets, but my office has a coffee machine that /might/ be smarter than me." "Our vegan ice cream is great. Got coconut- or cashew-based. Homemade. -- and /I/ didn't even know I could do it," Shane admits with a faint blush. "Half of me just followed through on starting it because assholes said I /couldn't/. Too young, too blue, too --" The slant of his grin is crooked, his tone a little wry. "-- Not B." He lifts his cup for a sip of coffee. "You kidding, we play that game all the damn time. And the blue disease /always/ gets named after the rising plague now. We can pretend like it's actually getting freaking eradicated." Shane huffs out a short breath, scrubbing his knuckles against his cheek. "Still infestations all over, though. It's goddamn /sick/, is what it is. -- My neighbors just ran into some people with a whole bunch of infected the other day." His gills flutter again, one fist circling his heart. "... Not very appetizing lunch talk, my bad. I'm -- not really any good at science no. Like I said, B got all the smart. I just enjoy hir robots." "I don't see B wanting to create a place for coffee and mutants," Melinda gives a little shrug, and digs her shoulders back against the chair she is sitting in. Her cup starts collecting condensation in front of her. "Aww. Don't downplay yourself so much. Science may not be my forte, but I'm sure you're interesting when you speak on other topics. You've already grabbed Shane's attention with the mention of games. And he's right. Lots of Pandemic. They might like Settlers of Catan a little more than I do, but it just brings back flashes of childhood Monopoly to me." "Cashew ice cream?" Bruce strokes his stubbly chin. "I've seen that in grocery stores, but was skeptical. I'll have to stop by and try that before summer ends." He considers Shane steadily. "I suppose the flip side of looking so like your sister is that people will constantly want to compare you, as though you were in competition to win at life--Monopoly style. But as for the plague...I was far, far away from it all, and thus not as viscerally marked as those of you who survived the outbreak." His brows wrinkle deeply. "Speaking of which, I would think that most people in this region are quite familiar with the symptoms and know that treatment is available." He shakes his head again. "I don't think I can adequately explain to you just how boring I am--which is why board games are good. You don't need to be interesting to be a decent gaming partner." "Oh, if it's a competition, B is winning." Shane doesn't sound wry this time, just amused and somewhat proud. "Thankfully it's not, so she lets me just mooch off her success. And I think B --" He pauses, a very small frown wrinkling his brows. "... definitely wants to create a place for mutants. But probably one with more tea." After this his gills flutter again. Rapid, once, before settling back. "Treatment's available if you can pay for it. And the actual cure is more expensive still. A lot of people just pray it's the flu until it's too late for the doses that can keep it from progessing and the cure -- they can't /afford/. So. They try to play it down, but you still hear about pockets of -- y'know. Dead." His teeth chomp, demonstratively. "Cuz god fucking forbid we hand out medicine for free that's like /socialism/." You don't need to be able to see his pupils to hear the roll of his eyes, here. "Oh, I don't mean that I don't think she... I mean, well, her goals seem different. She's like a rocket, in my mind, zooming forward, where you're sort of rippling outward from a single location. Both of you are creating an impact. It's just... different focuses - focii?" Melinda bites her lip as she leans forward and snags her drink, taking a long pull from the straw. She drinks for a little while, her ears turning red, the color sliding down to her cheeks. "And with tea." She inhales an tries to move on. "We had to hand it out during the height of the outbreak, but now that it's 'over,' people are not the best at avoiding the contagion words and they are getting slack. We should continue to be aggressive about this. It's far from eradicated." Bruce appears attentive even while he eats--/his/ appetite, at least, unaffected by talk of the plague. He does not comment at once, but nurses his coffee, eyes distant. "And, because those in power can afford the cure, little incentive exists to develop a vaccine. Implications for public health unpleasant." The fingers of his left hand pluck at a fold in his right sleeve, straightening it. "Maybe I /shouldn't/ be taking a break from the squishier science." His head shakes abruptly. "But I'd have a lot of catching up to do, coming at this completely fresh, and I'm no epidemiologist. Sor--" He rubs at his temple. "Ugh. B said she preferred to...sign it?" This with a somewhat clumsy circling of closed hand over heart. Shane pulls in a quick breath, slants Mel a quick smile. "Hir goals are different. S'preeeetty true. I guess we'll have to wait and see whose impact is --" His head shakes. There's a brief quiet before: "Yeah. I mean, when things were /horrible/ there was so much push to make the cure but now that it's controlled /enough/ it's like -- why bother? Plus," Shane adds with a faint scowl, "the government still doesn't really want to face the part where they're the ones who /started/ this all so there's -- a lot of political /bullshit/ tied up in /everything/ about that plague. V--" His gills flutter again, eyes skipping around the cafe before his voice drops, quieter but no less angry. "... Vector has -- /said/ he'd be glad to work on a vaccine only except he /can't/ because the government just wants to put him in a lab again. I mean 'prison'. Because /he's/ the terrorist." These words end on a soft growl. His hand presses down against his gills after this. "Yeah." Now he lifts his hand, signing his words as he speaks them. "Signing is useful. Kept a lot of people alive during the plague but -- there's so many other times it's just /handy/ too." With a grin, the sim-comming halts for: "No pun intended." "If you're interested in working on it, we can introduce you to part of the medical community that came up with the cure -- I... know nothing about Vector. I just know doctor's at the clinic." Melinda takes a sip. "Not that you have to drop your specialty to work on this. I mean, it's... well," with all the talk of sign, Mel slips directly into signing, 'I don't know' and settles back in hir seat. "We might have better luck finding a grass roots politician and getting that person to boost it to the forefront during the elections coming up." The slight widening of Bruce's eyes might signal anxiety, alarm, or anger, or some combination. He gulps down more coffee, almost compulsively. "There's always a lot of politics in managing epidemics, but I wasn't privy to the more lurid details of this particular one." Then, after a moment's thought, "I probably /still/ am not, actually, and that's a disturbing thought. At any rate...I am almost assuredly not the right kind of biologist for this task, but I also like to network with experts in other fields. Like B--and I don't think that her undeniable brilliance and her accomplishments in any way diminish yours. There's more than one way to make an impact." He watches the others' hands, nodding slightly in the way that people do unconsciously when impressed. "I ah...all the languages I speak involve jaw-flapping in some form, which I guess is fine so long as certain English words don't fall out." "Are there any politicians running who aren't total fucking tools? -- I'll actually be able to vote, this time around. And I /wish/ I didn't know anything about Vector." Shane slumps in his seat. "Sometimes life gives you the shittiest fucking end of the genetic stick. But he'd /still/ have been mostly-harmless if the military hadn't been /looking/ to make bioweapons out of him. And instead we got --" A shudder ripples up through him. "But I guess 'harmless until they made us killers' applies to half of all us goddamn labrats -- I am not," he says abruptly, returning to sim-comming as he sits up a little straighter, "making this conversation any more palatable am I? And here I'm supposed to be being /gentlemanly/. Helping lure in repeat customers. -- Which languages?" Melinda reaches out a hand to grab one of Shane's shoulder, then proceeds to rub it. "All of that applies at the counter, hun. You're encouraged to have deep and passionate conversations about all topics while you are sitting in these chairs, consuming delicious beverages or food." She finds herself taking a drink after mentioning beverages, her face looking a little like she recognizes it. She sets the glass down afterward. "Shane is quite the linguist himself, but I feel like he learns how to swear in languages he can't speak fluently." "Mostly harmless," Bruce echoes, staring down into his coffee. "I don't know if I'd say that about most people, period, mutant or no. There's a lot of harm in the world, but I'm inclined to think that the people use others as weapons do more harm than those they use." He allows a nervous chuckle. "I ah...it's important stuff to talk about, though. Jax had me thinking about some of this already, I just hadn't..." His head shakes again, slowly. "I learned French very young, then Russian and Mandarin in college. Kind of rusty on the last one, but I'll have more opportunity to speak it here." A pause. "In New York, I mean, not this coffee shop in particular..." "{Of course! How else would I /do/ it?}" Shane's initial answer -- in choppy but understandable Mandarin -- comes with a small crook of grin at Bruce, the largely innocuous sentence doubling in that language as a rather crude curse. After this, a switch to somewhat smoother French: "{You'll have the opportunity to practice a lot, I imagine.}" And in much easier Russian, blithe and amused now: "{In New York /or/ this coffeeshop.}" He leans slightly into Mel's touch. "Cursing is pretty much a universal, anyway. I can all but guarantee you no matter where some motherfucker is from, at /some/ point they're gonna piss me off. Priorities." Melinda laughs a little and gives Shane one last squeeze before she gets to her feet. "Unfortunately, I am on the clock, and while I can imagine the colorful things Shane is telling you, I am still going to leave you in his care. Please, have a wonderful lunch." She snags her glass as she gives Bruce one last sympathetic smile. The she is turning away to work. Bruce stares at Shane, startled, but a smile pulls at his lips again. "{So I see!}" The French comes rather smoothly and, much like Shane's, with a Canadian accent. "Thank you for your hospitality," this to Mel as she returns to her work. "{I will definitely want to brush up on the languages I know,}" his Russian has a distinctive Ukrainian sound. "{Maybe,}" in Mandarin with a sharp northern twang, thick black eyebrows uplifted, "{even pick up a few new ones.}"