Logs:Adulting

Adulting
Dramatis Personae Desi, Shane	2021-12-14 "I'm a bitch is the problem."
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. It's even more of a chaos in the back office of Evolve than it usually is, boxes yet to be unpacked and papers stacked high on the desk, folded blankets and a pillow atop a backpack hastily shoved into a corner. Shane is tucked at the cluttered desk, neat as ever in contrast to the room's chaos in a sky blue spread-collar dress shirt cinched with a simple gray and blue striped tie in an intricate trinity knot, a faintly pearlescent gray vest, and trousers to match, the jacket draped over the back of his chair. His head is buried in one clawed hand as he stares disconsolately at photographs of a pleasant-looking one bedroom apartment not too far from the cafe. "At this point it's almost like, why fucking bother?" To judge by her outfit, Desi has probably just come from one of her wardrobe consulting clients. She's looking sharp and classically office-femme in a gray and white pinstripe skirt suit over a powder pink blouse, sheer stockings, and pink stiletto pumps. Her posture is somewhat less staid and dignified at the moment, draped sideways in one of the comfortable chairs that she's tugged over to one side of Shane's desk rather than across from it. Her eyes flick dispassionately over the photographs. "You might find a reasonable landlord, in theory," she allows, "or just a blind one. That seems more likely." The corner of her mouth gives a sardonic quirk. "I suppose asking dear old Professor Chaz for a raise won't help matters." "I'll ask him. Hey, what's ten percent more than jack goddamn squat?" Shane's gills flutter quick and irritable. He slumps back in the chair, tips his head to stare up at the ceiling. "Maybe I'll do like everyone else, move into your brothers' basement. Hear it's real luxe there, now." "Bet if you all unionized, he might rethink things." Desi slides down a little further in her slump. "I don't know if you'd want to live in a house full of dysfunctional white people, but I doubt they would object. The neighbors, now..." She tsks softly. "Having you there would make my weekends more pleasant, anyway. We could have drunken slumber parties and pretend we don't have to pay taxes." Shane snorts, eyes cutting sidewise to Desi. "Vigilante union? Howzat gonna work." He holds his hands up palms-out at Desi's suggestion, eyes a little wider and his head shaking. "Woah, no, I had my fill of drunken weekends on the road. It is sober slumber parties until next tour and you know if one fucking decimal point is out of place on my taxes this place would be shut down in a second. Not that Dai would ever let that happen." His hands drop back to the desk, one braced against its edge and the other reluctantly returning to the mouse to click. I would like to confirm availiability, schedule a tour, request application. Send. "Things at home still --" His other hand teeters unsteadily in the air, brows lifting in question. "Okay, fine, sober slumber parties." Desi sounds just a bit reluctant. "We can still do midnight snack raids, though." She oozes down to prop her elbow on the edge of Shane's desk. "It's not," she starts, then does not quite seem to know where to go with that. "It's been worse, but it's still weird, and I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels waiting for it to not be weird." Her hand turns up in a gesture of resignation. "I'm trying to be there at least, but I don't think that's at all the same thing as being present." "I don't think interdimensional dead clone-sister is ever gonna be not-weird, like, it's -- probably okay that that's still weird." Shane is sifting through more apartment listings, now, but kind of halfheartedly. He's half-turned in his seat toward Desi, head tipping to one side. "Why be there if you're not gonna be there, then? Like just to creepily haunt the house or what's the goal, with that?" "The goal is--actually being there." Desi tucks back a few strands of hair that have escaped her updo. "I'm just failing at it. Gods, they're my family, and I want to be in their lives. Hers too, I guess." She winces. "But then I keep saying stuff like that. Like she's some kind of grudging afterthought. She's a nice kid. I want to like her." "It's been a whole damn year, Desi." Shane doesn't sound critical, here, just kind of matter-of-fact. "I think at some point you kind of have to be there or just -- not. How do you want to be in your own family's life? That's a choice you make, or you don't, you don't just dither about it forever." Desi does not immediately reply. "I'm not dithering, I'm flailing. But this shouldn't be so hard! We've been a mess since my earliest memories." She draws a breath and lets it back out. "Somehow we always seemed to pull it together..." She studies her flawless french manicure, watching the light bead on its glossy finish. "I guess Luci is mostly the one who pulls it together. It's kind of long past time I start acting like an adult and not an overgrown middle child." "Isn't he a middle child?" Shane's brows have wrinkled skeptically at this description. "Sometimes life is real hard and everyone's a mess. You can't have always just relied on him --?" Though he's sounding uncertain even as he says this. "Okay, so what's the plan for not just waiting for him to fix everyone? Maybe you could take turns on like. Family clean-up duty." "I'm more middle than he is," Desi says primly. "By that metric, we're all middle children except Matthieu and --" She sighs. "-- and Sera. Alright, so the plan is...try to be sober occasionally? Find out what's happening in my siblings' lives? Herd everyone into the same room for hockey when that's in the cards?" She wiggles out of her heels and tucks her legs onto the chair. "Gods, I feel like I've been trying to be Luci my entire adult life. You'd think I'd get better at fixing things, after a while." "Nah." Shane shakes his head, dismissive. "Trying to be Luci sounds exhausting as fuck. Why don't you just try to be you for a while? Might get better results." "I'm a bitch is the problem." Desi sounds startlingly unbothered by this admission. "I guess there's worse things to be, and it's not like they don't know that about me. Except Sera." She folds one arm across the desk and props her chin up in the other hand. "It's just daunting." Her eyes dart to the endless scroll of apartment search results on Shane's screen. "Gods, maybe that's what our mother thought, too. Wonder where we'd be if she had a friend like you to kick her ass about neglecting her family." "It's been a year, she probably knows," Shane supplies, oh-so-very helpfully. "More daunting than constantly trying to be someone else? Cuz that sounds like nonsense. Plus, it doesn't seem to be working. Just wearing yourself and your liver ragged that way." He rests his palm back agaist the desk, idly pushing his chair from one side to the other. "Dunno. Didn't exactly know her well enough to speculate." He hitches a shoulder, quick and small. "Kinda pointless to wonder. Where you are is here, and if you don't start working with that Gae's gonna be sitting there five years from now wondering what his life could've been if he had siblings who gave a crap." "I've been the very picture of graciousness to her," Desi retorts, then switches smoothly to French, "{...except all the times I wasn't. And my brothers--well, I've got a lot of work to do.}" She straightens herself partway up. "We can still have slumber parties, though. Maybe at your future bachelor pad." She knocks on the desk three times, soft. "Or our basement."