ArchivedLogs:That Kind of Night

That Kind of Night
Dramatis Personae Eric, Lucien	2013-06-09 Many hours after Kyle's death...
Location <NYC> Morningside Heights
Though sometimes considered part of the Upper West Side or Harlem, Morningside Heights plays home to many important locales of its own. The prestigious Columbia University is located here, and Morningside Park provides a pleasant escape from the concrete of the city. Grant's Tomb is here as well, and the Academic Acropolis is not only a great place to get a degree, but also to get a good view of the city while studying. Unlike many other bars, Down Under opens fairly early - around 4, though the specific time can be somewhat fast and loose - and its customers tend to all arrive not long after work. College students and alcoholics, mostly, people who share a sincere and committed need to get fucked up. Eric has not been there since four, but since closer to midnight. He is still half in uniform - the less recognizable bottom half - with an NYPD exercise shirt replacing the bloodstained upper half of his uniform. He has also managed, somehow, to get himself cut off - an impressive feat at a bar that regularly has its customers passing out on the floor. It may, perhaps, have something to do with him downing two bottles of Duggan's ($15/L, with markup), and the fear that he is about to quite literally die. Die he is not, stumbling out of the bar with a drunken slur back at the bartender, "Fuc'ya, fine, 'll go t'a'not'er bar! Cut me off - 'M not that drunk!" In the manner of all people who say such things, he doesn't make it four steps out of the bar before he trips on his own feet and falls flat onto the ground. "Ow." He stares at the ground for several moments before pushing himself back up to a sitting position, frowning backwards at his feet. Lucien is not out drinking, considerably steadier on his feet than Eric as he makes his way out of a nearby apartment building. He's dressed startlingly formally, for the late-late hour, sleek charcoal tuxedo whose bowtie he is currently re-tying. He is humming to himself, softly -- 'Corner of the Sky', from /Pippin/ -- and there is an ease to his unhurried stride down the sidewalk. Unhurried enough that he's noticing Eric even /before/ the collapsing, with a thoughtful look, though he makes no move to stop this stumble. He does slip over towards Eric once the officer is down, though, stooping to steady the man with a hand lightly rested against an elbow. Quiet senses stretch out reflexively, silently reading mood, state. "Goodness," he is murmuring, quietly, "You seem like you have had a night. Should I hail you a cab?" Eric is drunk - though, perhaps preplexingly, his mental faculties are clearly repairing themselves with a surprising alacrity. "N' need," Eric waves off, one hand rising and then falling when he misjudges the force necessary to lift a hand in salute. "'Nother bar is just a couple'a block. I c'n walk." This remains to be seen. Eric's emotions are in a state of turmoil - a very similar state of turmoil, in fact, to the last time that Lucien was rooting around in his mind. Sadness, anger, /guilt/ at the sadness and anger, and a deep sense of schadenfreude. Visceral horror is in there, too, as the officer pushes himself up on his hands and knees. Lucien's lips press together thinly. His hand closes more firmly against Eric's elbow, gentle pressure supporting the other man, guiding him to his feet. "That kind of a night, hmm?" It's quiet, still. His green eyes linger on Eric's face, then sweep the street around them. Eric's laugh is a dark one as he rises, unsteadily, to his feet. "S'not very day tha' your sargeant gets..." he trails off, taking a staggering step to one side and then adjusting his footing to a steadier one. "Ripped apart by a fuckin shadow creature." he spits, then almost immediately his emotions swing from anger back to guilt. "Couldn't'a happened to a better man," he says, voice sarcastic. Lucien's hand stays at Eric's elbow as the man sways and staggers, not so much restraining as preventing another topple. He is very silent in the wake of Eric's words; for a moment Eric's emotions clamp /down/ into a blank cool numbness, devoid of guilt or anger or anything at all. Maybe it's the impressive quantities of alcohol. It doesn't last before they are left free to rollercoaster again as they will. "-- Your sergeant?" Putting the brakes on his emotions does help him clear his mind enough to peer at Lucien's face, blinking. "We've met before." he says, suddenly, and his eyebrows press together as the gears in his head struggle to move through his alcohol-soaked mind. It takes him a little longer to squint before he makes the connection, and he bursts out into laughter that is at once both amused and sad. "Yeah. You met him. Kyle - sat down ri' next to me when you were there on my first and only visit." His laughter fades and he shakes his head, mind slowly clearing. "And now he's dead." "Ripped apart." Lucien's voice is a study in neutrality, quiet-calm with little to mark its softly accented syllables. "By /what/?" It could be easy to read the stress in this syllable as disbelief. He steers Eric -- not far. To a bus stop. Guiding him to the bench. "We have met," he agrees softly. "Your sergeant. He was a friend?" "A girl. Woman." Eric sits down heavily on the bench and he lets his head fall backwards to bump into the glass, staring upwards at the buildings that rise in front of his vision. "Made'a shadows. She was in the ring when we..." he trails off and shakes his head. "Yeah, he was, until that day. After, I dunno what he was." His speech is starting to clear up, and indeed, he is not nearly as drunk as he was a few moments ago - enough to ease his speech and soften his words, but ever more sober. "Ah." It's soft. Lucien releases Eric, once the cop is seated. He leans against the side of the bus shelter, shoulder propped against the wall, head tipped downward to look at the other man. "One of them." And then silence. He reaches into his pocket, after a pause, to pull out a silver cigarette case. "After that day?" He opens it, slipping one cigarette out -- long and slim and black -- to set it between his lips. He offers the case out towards Eric once he does. "... human," he suggests, cigarette bobbing between his lips. "Hardly." Eric says, picking up the cigarette and digging into his pocket. He, at least, has a lighter, which he proffers with a surprisingly steady hand towards Lucien after lighting the end of his own cigarette. "He was before. After, he..." The police officer shakes his head. "A criminal. He should be in jail." The anger is back, tightening his tone. "And now that lady has had her petty revenge, and we are all fucked." "Criminals are not human?" Lucien's lips actually twitch upwards at this, for a moment. He leans forward, cupping his hand around Eric's to light his cigarette. It is sweet, clove-scent accenting the tobaccco. "We?" His eyebrows lift, questioningly, at this choice of words. "... I do not suppose the NYPD looks too /kindly/ on mutants killing their own." Now his voice is shifting towards dry. Eric's line thins, and he chuckles. "Criminals are human, but he wasn't no more." he says, shaking his head. "Lost his humanity when he did what he did. Nothin' left but a monster." he says, taking a deep drag on the clove cigarette before taking it out of his mouth and holding it, between two fingers. "The NYPD doesn't look too kindly on anyone killin' their own, and they don't look too kindly on mutants neither. Both of them together? There'll be beatings in the street and ain't nobody goin'ta stop it, not for a bit." He does not elaborate on his choice of pronoun. "I have not found 'human' and 'monster' to be mutually exclusive concepts," Lucien answers in quiet murmur, drawing a deep breath of the cigarette. He tips his head upwards to exhale the stream of smoke. "Did they catch her?" He asks this somewhat distractedly, in time with his exhale. "Both of them together?" His head shakes. "There will be war." "Nor 'mutant' and 'monster'." Eric comments, darkly. He shakes his head, and then shrugs his shoulders. "Not as I've heard, yet, but half the force is out in Central Park right now, goin' through it bit by bit. They're gonna tear half the city apart lookin' for her." He snorts and shakes his head. "Not a war, not if the mutants just stay quiet for a week. But if they fight back?" He shakes his head and lets it fall back against the glass once more, returning the cigarette to his mouth. "Yeah. Then." "-- That distinction," Lucien is musing, quietly, to Eric's first comment, "somewhat implies that 'mutant' and 'human' /are/." He takes another deep drag, dropping his hand to tap ash from his cigarette. "Beatings in the street," he says this a little more crisply, "will /be/ a declaration of war. Unless you think it is just the /prerogative/ of the police force to assault the populace as they will." "No more than it is the perogative of mutants to kill police officers." Eric denies, flatly. "I expect it will not be... too bad. Fortunately, the mutant who did it is obviously mutant enough to end most latitude in," he holds up his fingers and makes quotes in the air. "Mix-ups." A pause, and he shakes his head. "And the feds may get involved, quite quick. But this will... make things ugly, fast." "You say in one breath that the police are going to start beating mutants in the street and say in the next that it is only war if mutants fight /back/. I do not believe I was the one who introduced that particular double standard." Lucien's eyes close, his posture sagging tiredly against the bus shelter. "It is already bad," he says, softly. "I expect there will be a death before the week is through. If we are lucky, only one." "Possibly. Possibly not - in all the tune ups I've seen, the cops doing it are usually pretty careful to know their limits, no matter how bad it gets. But... resisting can come in all shapes and sizes, and scared cops pull triggers." Eric says, taking another long drag on his cigerette. "I don't know. I'm desked for a few days until I pass my fuckin' psych eval," he groans, bumping his head against the frame of the bus shelter. "Shit, and now I'm sober enough to remember I have a psych eval." "What sort of mindframe does it take," Lucien wants to know absently, "to pass a police officer's psych exam?" "Not too violent, not too emotionless. They're just worried you're gonna go on a killin' spree or eat your own gun, and they don't check all that often." Eric shrugs his shoulders and takes a deep, long breath through his cigrette. "As you can tell." This earns a soft laugh from Lucien, exhaled in a stream of clove-scented smoke. His head shakes, eyes turning out towards the nighttime sky. "Tomorrow," he says, quietly, "is going to be an interesting day." "Very." Eric says, looking darkly out at the street. Then he looks up at the other man, a mischevious twinkle in his eye. "I don't suppose you'd care to have a good night before the ugly morning?" he asks, one eyebrow raising as he smirks up at the other man. "I don't," Lucien answers with a slight upward hike of eyebrows, "tend to go home with people when they are intoxicated." Somewhere in the distance, police sirens are wailing. He closes his eyes, listening to this sound with a small curl of smile. "Is this how you cope? I would be failing you on your psych eval already." "I ain't intoxicated." Eric says, and despite every drunk wanting to insist this, it seems it might actually be true. "Not anymore, anyway. A little buzzed, but that'll be gone, too, by the time we made it anywhere." He grins at the other man and shrugs. "Glad you ain't my examiner, then." "No, you do sober up fast, don't you." Lucien's eyes stay closed. "I do not imagine your colleagues are aware." Eric snorts and shakes his head, taking another long drag on his cigarette. "You think I would'a been invited to a mutant fight club as a visitor if'n they knew? Besides, bein' a mutant is an instant termination from the force." "You very well might. Being a mutant is no guarantee of having any compassion for others. You were not the only mutant spectating. Perhaps just the only one disgusted by what you saw." Lucien's cigarette is pulling down to its final embers, on his next drag. He regards the stub with a frown, and then stumps it out on a metal pole of the bus shelter. "Tomorrow will be still more interesting for you, then, I suppose. I do not envy you these coming weeks." "Perhaps. Disgusted, I was." Eric shakes his head, once, and then stands up, stretching muscled arms over his head and cracking it out from side to side. "We will see. Perhaps it will not be as bad as I think," he says, shrugging and taking one last pull on his cigarette before stubbing it out between two fingers. "I suppose I don't envy me neither." "Perhaps." Lucien watches Eric stretch from half-lidded eyes. He extends a hand, offering Eric a hand up. "You might want to get to that other bar. You may as well enjoy the night while you can." Eric takes Lucien's hand and grins. "I'd have preferred to spend the rest of the night with you, but...." He looks the other man up and down once and gives him a warm smile. "Be safe. Having mutant friends in these times can be almost as dangerous as bein' one yourself." he says, and he pats the other man on the shoulder with a heavy hand. Then he turns to leave, wandering down the streets and cell phone coming out of his pocket. The help up comes with a soft flush of something warm and soothing, assauging the edges of stress and guilt. Lucien smoothes down the jacket of his tuxedo as he turns to head off, stepping to the corner to hail a cab.