ArchivedLogs:Whores and Assholes

Whores and Assholes
Dramatis Personae Doug, Lucien
In Absentia	2013-02-11 Gym unfriendliness.
Location <NYC> Sweat - Greenwich Village
An apropos name; it is hard to escape the smell, when visiting this fitness club. Open twenty-four hours, this facility comes equipped with all the bells and whistles for those who want to train hard. All the standard gym equipment can be found and then some. In addition to private personal trainers, there are group classes in all sorts of things, from bicycling to crossfit to yoga to martial arts to more esoteric fare such as pole dancing and dodgeball. An olympic-sized pool makes this a popular draw, and the sauna rooms by each locker room are nice spots to unwind after a heavy workout. Monday morning. The pre-work crowd has come and gone. There's an eclectic mix of people scattered around the gym, now; students with their variable schedules, stay-at-home parents with kids dropped off at school or in the daycare room, the self-employed with schedules perhaps more demanding than the students but flexible all the same. Lucien at a glance would probably be pegged into that first category. Young, backpack'd, jeans and a plain black t-shirt under his peacoat. He goes to the locker rooms quickly, changes quickly, emerges again in black track pants, running shoes, a deep green Under Armour running shirt. Water bottle. iPod. With a foot and a half of unmelted snow still bogging down the city outside, he stakes a claim at a treadmill, tucking his things onto it but starting to stretch before he gets on. Doug has been in the gym for a bit, already. Apparently blowing off his Monday classes, or perhaps he's just running late for them. Dressed in blue rugby shorts and a yellow t-shirt, he's claimed a treadmill for himself, jogging lightly on the slow-moving belt and bobbing his head to whatever is pumping through his headphones. When Lucien appears at the machine next to him, the blonde glances over and flashes a smile at the older man. "Lucien," he says, pulling his earbuds out and letting them dangle from his hip. Reaching forward to jab a finger at the control panel, he slows the belt's rotation to a walking pace. "How've you been?" There is the briefest, slightest tightening of Lucien's already exhaustion-drawn expression at being addressed, and he looks up at his things like perhaps he is considering claiming a new station at the gym -- only for the quickest of moments, and then an easy smile pushes these things back into simple politeness. "Full of cocoa," he says, light and warm, "the perfect end-cap to a snow war. Your infamous neighbor is handy in the kitchen. How did you fare, yesterday evening?" Doug grins, ignoring the almost-flee in favor of the conversation. "Which one?" he asks, reaching for his water bottle, hanging from the handrail. "Both Jackson and Alex are fantastic cooks." He re-hangs the water bottle, and stretches his arms over his head in a brief motion that pops down his spine. "I couldn't stick around for that," he says of the snow war. "It was too much chaos, and when that person tackled Shane, I thought it was probably better to take off." He shrugs. "Looked like folks were having fun, though. More fun than coding homework, or doing network searches, anyway." He grabs his towel, hanging by the water, and mops at his face before dropping it over the rail. "I could have used some cocoa, though. My heat's been hit-and-miss since the ghost showed up." He frowns. "Can ghosts show up? I guess it was always there." "Is Alex infamous?" Lucien wants to know, with a slight tilt of his head, "I only saw the one of them plastered across the news." His eyebrows raise, then, though this is only briefly visible as he bends lower, continuing his stretching. "Ghosts." His tone here leaves little question that he is questioning either the seriousness or this statement or Doug's sanity. "She might be infamous," Doug says with a lift of his shoulder. "I don't really know about her life in New Orleans. She could be the heir to Marie Laveau, for all we know." He chuckles, and shakes his head. "He didn't have to be all over the news," he says. "I could have made all that video go away, only he wouldn't let me." He does not sound happy about this fact, and his jaw sets slightly before relaxing again. Lucien's question gets a smile, and the blonde nods sagely. "Yep. A real live ghost, complete with messages in the mirror, weird noises, and flying dishes." He offers the escort a shrug. "Hive and his roommates -- do you know Hive? He lives right under me. Anyway, they decided to pull a prank on me and my then-roommate, only they seem to have woken up the /actual/ resident." Then there's an amused look thrown Lucien's way. "You don't believe in ghosts?" "Made it go away?" Lucien looks up, his eyebrows raising again. "It was all over everywhere. I doubt that very much. The internet has a way of preserving things. Isn't there some inherent contradiction in saying a /real live ghost/?" His tone is definitely skewing more towards the Doug-Is-Crazy than the skeptical, now. He climbs onto the treadmill, notching up the incline somewhat and then tapping it on. 8, 9, 10 mph. For a moment his eyes close, as he falls into rhythm. "Of course I don't believe in ghosts. Someone else is pranking you." "Okay," Doug says, unbothered by Lucien's skepticism of his computer abilities as he reaches out to increase his own speed slightly. "I know what I'm capable of doing, though, and I'm pretty sure I could have pulled it off." He flashes a grin at the escort, and lifts a shoulder. "Well, if it is someone else, they're not from the building, and they're /very/ good. They even manage to create cold spots in the apartment, and make noises in my closet unrelated to anything inside of it." He wrinkles his nose. "Seems like a lot of work to go to, just to scare my roommate into moving out." "Can you get all the files off all those cameras that were there, get everything out of millions of people's caches on their home computers, round up and burn the hundreds of thousands of copies of media already gone to print and -- most importantly -- erase the /memories/ of the thousands of eyewitnesses present and millions who'd already seen the story?" Lucien asks, calmly and without bothering to look over at Doug. "Because if you tell me yes, you're either delusional, lying, or the most powerful mutant I've ever met, and if you tell me no, you'll only be causing more problems than it's worth when people realize that their things have been tampered with. Which they /would/ realize, once their files no longer matched their memories. Unlike on television, people do not immediately forget things and move on when your erase something from their computer." He seems to be ignoring talk of ghosts. At least, it just gets a slight press of his lips that could mean anything, and a slow exhale as he continues running. Doug's silence is sullen, after the barrage of questions, although his expression remains loose and calm-looking. "I suppose I can't," he says after a long moment, his voice clipped. "Affect people's memories, that is. But I /could/ have eliminated anything that was in a machine connected to the internet." He doesn't elaborate further, instead increasing his speed to something more like speedwalking, and his concentration intensifies, his own mouth finally pressing into a flat line. "And you wonder why he wouldn't want that?" Lucien's speed is definitely a run. By this point, he is -- not winded, but at least exerting enough to slow down his rate of speaking. He glances sidelong over towards Doug. "Computers aren't a magic button to make problems go away. Someone just tried to kill the mayor. You realize that means there's an ongoing police investigation, right? One that your friend is involved in? Tampering with anything would have certainly been noticed, given that most people are /not/ computers, and would likely have ended with him getting arrested. Tampering with documentation just looks like trying to hide." Doug offers Lucien the kind of look only an eighteen year old boy can give someone who's borderline lecturing them, which is to say, the stink-eye (with a flash of something akin to realization in the depths of it). "I suppose you're right," he says slowly, and reaches out to slow his treadmill again. "I hadn't really thought about the cops. I was just trying to get the reporters away from our building, and give Jax some peace." "I have no doubt," Lucien allows, "that your intentions were good. I just think your friend might have had reasons unrelated to ingratefulness for denying them." He plucks his water bottle out of its cupholder as he runs, pulling its top up with his teeth to take a small sip. "It would be nice," he says, quieter, "if there were some magic button for fixing problems." "I didn't think he was ungrateful," Doug says, his jaw setting briefly again. "I just think he, like a lot of people, underestimate what I'm capable of, because I'm not all showy and shit." He grabs up his towel, and mops at his face, snapping the towel a bit in irritation before re-hanging it on the handrail. "I wish there /was/ a button like that," he says in a less-annoyed voice, frowning at the far wall. "There's a few days lately I would have gladly punched it." "It sounds like that frustrates you." Lucien's tone is back to bland-calm, it would border on indifference if not for the slight edge of talking-while-running strain. "Only a few?" His lips twitch slightly upwards. "Have things lately been particularly difficult?" "It does frustrate me," Doug admits. "Because it's unfair. I might not have some" he drops his voice, glancing around their location for eavesdroppers. "fancy mutant light powers or telepathy or any one of a hundred other, probably more pro-active abilities that I've seen. But that doesn't mean that what I can do is of any less value." He lifts his eyebrows, and his mouth pulls down in a mild frown. "Would it frustrate /you/, if people didn't want you doing what you do best?" He grimaces. "I mean, I guess people /are/ trying to keep you from it, with solicitation laws, but you know what I mean." The question gets a snort. "Well, I'd like it for getting rid of my ghost, and bringing my roommate back, and not suggesting to Jax that I could do that stuff for him...so there's a lot I'd like to reset, yes." "Perhaps you just need to apply that value where it is better suited," Lucien says, quiet, but then something tightens in his jaw and he hits the stop button on his treadmill with one quick jab of his finger. He turns, eyes narrowed on Doug incredulously. "My gods, you are full of yourself," he says, a good deal sharper than his previous gentle tone. "Perhaps people don't want you doing what you do because you've /pissed them off/ too much." Doug reaches out to punch his own treadmill to a stop, and he turns a Look on Lucien. "Wow," he says simply. "She was right about you." He steps off his treadmill, and grabs his towel to wipe down the rails. When he speaks again, it's in fluent French, tinged with Lucien's native Quebecois accent. "~I'm sorry that you find me so self-absorbed for knowing my capabilities. Perhaps I'll just leave you to your workout. I'm sure your...'clients'...appreciate the effort.~" He grabs his water bottle, and slings his towel over his shoulder, shifting back to English. "If I've pissed anyone off, I would hope that they would simply say it, and not be an asshole about it. I'd certainly let someone know if they were irritating /me/." He smiles a wide, tight smile. "Kind of like you are right now." "You know exactly one thing about me," Lucien says, the muscles in his cheek tight, "and that is what I do for money. You think that's the sum total of /what I do best/? That /solicitiation laws/ are keeping me from my true potential? /Fuck/, I hate teenagers." He speaks in English, not French, mostly just looking /more/ irritated at Doug's language-switching. "If you're usually this oblivious about when you're being an asshole, no wonder people don't want your /help/." "I know one thing because you only told me one thing," Doug says calmly. "And I had to work to get that out of you, Mysterious and aloof might work in the whore field, but they just come off as being an asshole in the day-to-day non-whore, poor man's world." He smiles again, and begins walking off. "I'm only an asshole to those who have it coming," he says over his shoulder. "You know, people who speak to me as if they're my parent when, in fact, we're not even good enough friends to merit it." He glances over his shoulder. "Good-bye, Lucien. Don't say talking with you wasn't a little slice of heaven -- because it wasn't." And then he's moving off, away from French whores and their opinions. Lucien doesn't answer this. He doesn't even look at Doug. He sticks his headphones in his ear, turning his treadmill back, notching up the incline and turning it to eleven this time.