Logs:Opening Up
| Opening Up | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia | 2024-11-24 "... kinda depressin' how many folks found mutant community there first." |
| Location
<NYC> Evolve Cafe - Lower East Side | |
Spacious and open, this coffeeshop has a somewhat industrial feel to it, grey resin floors below and exposed-beam ceilings that have been painted up in a dancing swirl of abstract whorls and starbursts, a riot of colour splashed against a white background. The walls alternate between brick and cheerfully lime-green painted wood that extends to the paneling beneath the brushed-steel countertops. There's an abundance of light, though rather than windows (which are scarce) it comes from plentiful hanging steel lamps. The walls here are home to artwork available for sale; though the roster of prints and paintings and drawings and photographs changes on a regular basis it has one thing in common -- all the artists displayed are mutants. The seating spaced around the room is spread out enough to keep the room from feeling cluttered. Black chairs, square black tables that mostly seat two or four though they're frequently pushed around and rearranged to make space for larger parties. In the back corner of the room is more comfortable seating, a few large black-corduroy sofas and armchairs with wide tables between them. There's a shelf of card and board games back here available for customers to sit and play. The chalkboard menus hanging behind the counter change frequently, always home to a wide variety of drinks (with an impressive roster of fair-trade coffees and teas largely featured) though their sandwiches and wraps and soups and snacks of the day change often. An often-changing variety of baked goods sit behind the display case at the counter halfway back in the room, and the opposite side of the counter holds a small selection of homemade ice creams. A pair of single-user bathrooms flanks the stairway in back of the cafe; at night, the thump of music can be heard from above, coming from the adjoining nightclub of the same name that sits up the stairs above the coffeehouse. Evolve isn't open; won't be open for a little while yet, on a Sunday morning. The gap between the late-late hour that it closes here Saturday night and the Sunday morning opening is not very long, squeezed tight enough the night closers and morning openers occasionally run some small risk of their shifts colliding. The locked door doesn't stop Joshua, though. He's appearing in the cafe, looking kind of rundown. His paramedic uniform is rumpled, his hair mussed, watermelon-embroidered kippah askew, dark shadows beneath his eyes. He's frowning at the total lack of anyone behind the counter, rubbing his eyes, frowning a little harder like it will change his current view. It does not. Finally he is pulling out his phone -- the clock on it is accusatorily calling out his misstep. "Fuck you," he tells the time. "Sorry, sugar," pipes up a familiar Southern accent from a front corner, "but that whole act was jus' for the cameras. M'sure we could find you an interested --" Jax is glancing up from a pile of paperwork, lips pursed as he considers Joshua intently. "-- someone." He's looking a little more kempt than Joshua, if only just -- the corduroy bell-bottom overalls he's wearing are hard to rumple, as is the asymmetrically colorblocked purple-blue-green sweatshirt over it. His dark hair is a bit of a shaggy mess, though, his face sporting a few days' worth of stubble speckled very dark against his very pale skin. His head is drooping into the cradle of one hand, cheek smooshed up where it presses to his palm, which does, at least a little bit, obscure the dark shadow under the eye that isn't hidden beneath a plain black patch. He's stifling a yawn as he sets his pen aside, dragging himself up so that he can trudge slowly toward the counter. "... y'want coffee? I can do coffee, at least." Outside there's a protracted jingling of keys before Polaris slips inside. She's wearing a black babydoll shirt with a jagged red anarchy heart on the chest, and black leather jacket, jeans, and boots festooned with steel hardware. Her hair sports a new side shave, what's left of the medium length hair unevenly feathered out to even punkier effect than is her norm. She does not look immensely surprised to see Jax, and if she's surprised to see Joshua she also isn't giving much indication. "You're not trying to take my job, are you?" she asks Jax, though it doesn't really sound like an admonishment and she isn't intercepting him, just start the beans grinding on her way back into the break room. She emerges a moment later sans jacket and bag, and plus her apron. "Good morning?" she says, belatedly. Probably she didn't intend it to be a question, but there's an uptick in her tone anyway. "Dash my hopes twice," Joshua grumbles, without missing a beat. He hasn't turned around, still fumbling his phone back into his pocket by the time Jax is approaching the counter to un-dash one of those hopes. He slumps against the currently-empty pastry display, turning his head to hide a yawn of his own against his sleeve. He lifts his chin to Polaris, and slumps a little further. "... he's already your boss." The abrupt hard tightening of Jax's jaw and the narrowing of his eye aren't visible to Polaris, behind him grinding the beans and then disappearing in the back, but they're easy enough for Joshua to see. Jax has wiped his expression back to a vague amiability by the time Polaris returns, the clench of his teeth swapped for easy smile and casual upnod. "Last haircut not gay enough?" He's starting to fix the coffee, but pauses at Joshua's comment, one brow hitching. "You want this coffee or not." Polaris blinks at Joshua. There's a weird intensity to her confusion that quickly drops away into an intense something else that's harder to place. "Oh. Yeah. I just meant the whole...opening." She's gathering supplies for doing just that, but stops again. "Last hair--oh." Her hand lifts kind of reflexively to her right temple. "This isn't some kind of post-breakup thing, it just got a little bit burned. In that library fire." Her hand drops back to the cleaning supply bucket. "But also, yeah, last haircut wasn't nearly gay enough." Joshua's brows pinch. "Want." His eyes lower to search the empty case very intently. "... saw that pyro again. Apparently not the first time with the. Control issues." "Oh, gosh, y'all was there?" Jax's eye goes wider, and he looks over Polaris's abrupt new haircut again. His mouth pulls sideways in a small grimace. "Darn, was kinda hoping the mutant thing was jus' fake. Y'all okay? -- they okay?" Polaris had circled around to the front of the glass cases but freezes again, her gaze snapping sharp to Joshua, but when she actually speaks it's kind of a mild, "Figures." To Jax, with a resigned smile, "No such luck. I was like, at the next table from this--person, when they got a migraine or something and started freaking out. I tried to talk them down but..." She sucks in air through her teeth. "Went from zero to Fahrenheit 451 in like ten seconds flat. So then I tried to drag them bodily out of there, and would have gotten a lot more than my hair burned off if Joshua hadn't saved both our asses." "Saw 'em Friday. Real annoyed I mentioned the fire. Was so four days ago." Joshua's melting has oozed as far down against the glass as it can comfortably go, and finally rather than adjust his stance he pushes himself reluctantly back upright. "Does kinda suck, though. Not sure where to send unstable adults." "Wait, back up, chronically unstable pyrokinetic --" Jax has been frowning at Polaris and Joshua critically but is now, at a small delay, tripping over this fact. It takes a moment before he remembers to get Joshua's cup, continue with the coffee. He's slow about it, mechanical, his frown lingering deep. "Mendel might have a support group still," he volunteers, though a bit uncertainly. Polaris laughs. "Oof! On Friday it would've been so yesterday." She lets go of the spray bottle and it hovers mid-air beside her, dangling from the curlicues of wire wrapped around its neck. "They claimed they never had that kind of instability before." She gives a one-shouldered shrug. "I tried to suggest they get their headache checked out, since that seemed to trigger the -- fwoosh. But they got so outraged at the very suggestion they should try to get it under control, and I was not about to risk starting another fire by pushing it." She straightens back up and moves to the next case, snatching the bottle out of the air. "We get a lot of folks coming through who earnestly want help, though." Joshua's droopy face pulls a just little more heavily downward, and he nods ponderously at so yesterday: "I've never been hip." He's folding his arms on the countertop again, settling down a little more intentionally. His head tips sideways and rests against his crossed arms. "Plenty of kids, too. Need a little help getting shit in hand. Don't need four years of boarding. But." Shrug. "School really should have some kinda summer camp. Kids who need a little help or little community but don't need -- y'know. All that." Jax is pulling the espresso shots, prepping a large vanilla latte for Joshua. His teeth scrape against his lip; an involuntary shiver ripples through him as they catch at the corner of his mouth, let it go again. "Shane wanted to expand this place for years but the money was always -- well." Polaris's hand clenches around the rag she's been using for a long moment before she exchanges it for a fresh one and wiping down the pick-up counters, too. "This has been kind of a de facto community center for as long as I've been working here, but even if it weren't, like..." She glances over her shoulder at the empty cafe. "People visit from all over because it's the only for-us-by-us space they know. The first time I ever stepped into a room full of freaks was after I got processed at Lassiter, and that a low bar to clear, but it always makes me wish I had more to offer them, you know?" "Huh. Would've thought de facto soup kitchen-slash-day-shelter would rake in cash." Which is reminding Joshua that he hasn't paid, yet. He untucks one arm from where it's being used as a pillow and produces his wallet from somewhere. "You offer coffee. S'more than most." "Livin' large off that sweet sweet niche coffeeshop income." Jax is ringing Joshua up, at least, probably this handful of dollars will go far towards keeping the lights on another day. He sets the coffee down on the counter, his fingers drumming rapidly against the surface. He's starting to chew at his lip again, catching himself quick and stopping with another uncomfortable fidget. "... kinda depressin' how many folks found mutant community there first." "I think for the people who come looking for Evolve, the coffee is almost incidental--until they try it." Polaris inhales deep and lets the breath out as a dreamy sigh. "I looked for mutant community in the labs, but not I'm not sure how much I actually found until Dawson turned up at Blackburn. I didn't even know what it could look like, but he did. And that wasn't Prometheus." She sweeps her free hand from Jax to Joshua. "It was you all." Joshua points at himself, brows hiking in a very who, me questioning. His eyes tick from Polaris to Jax as he hands over his cash, drops a few dollars of the change in the tip jar. "We-all aren't what we used to be. Maybe you should apologize." He gestures, expression very serious, with his wallet towards Jax, just before the wallet vanishes. "Sounds like you tanked the biggest community center we had." "Sorry!" Jax's cheeks have flushed dark. "Sure it won't be long till the government cooks up some new program t'torture us. Till then I think we gonna have to figure this out on our own." | |
