Logs:Monster Jobs

Monster Jobs
Dramatis Personae Joshua, Scott
In Absentia Matt	2024-06-18 "Most things aren't made for our purposes, we just jury-rig something that works."
Location <NYC> Harry's Hideaway - Salem Center
A cozy nook of a bar, Harry's has been run by the same grizzled proprietor for decades. The fare they serve is plain and typical bar food, but solid and well-prepared, and what the alcohol lacks in variety it makes up for in quality. Close proximity and long-developed relationships with the staff at Xavier's means they turn a blind eye to the mutants who frequent the bar. It's a quiet evening in here, the Tuesday crowd small and fairly subdued. Joshua -- in sturdy cargo pants that are splattered with some unidentifiable neon-green gloop which looks a lot like Nickelodeon's slime, and a fresh clean Xavier's tee pilfered from the school's stores, hair still slightly damp under his kippah -- is just bringing a large pitcher of beer over to this table. Though he also looks fairly subdued there's a kind of heavy decisiveness with which he clunks the empty steins down on the table. He's sliding one across the table as he drops into his seat. He does not, actually look quite as exhausted as his heavy whumphing would suggest. A little bemused, honestly, rubbing a palm slowly against one jowly cheek before he fills the beers. "Could've been worse." He flicks kind of perfunctorily at some drying Goop on his pants. "... music room's gonna be off-limits a minute." Scott twists not just his head, but his entire body around on his chair to welcome Joshua's approach. In some ways it's obvious they came in together, for he too still has goop clumped on his boots, his jeans, the worn motorcycle jacket draped over the back of his chair. "Could've been worse," has a kind of grim timbre as he slides one beer toward himself. Is this what he's cheersing too? As he lifts it, before he takes a sip, he's offering it out to Joshua for a clink. He tilts his head in what is probably a lazy, unshrugging what-can-you-do shrug -- "Mm, I'll -- put that in an email somewhere. Reassure everyone we will be buying new -- drums and pianos or whatever we have." "Was a fucking balalaika in there." Joshua lifts his glass and clinks it to Scott's. He slouches back, taking a swallow of his drink. He's rolling his head to the side, watching a young man in the corner practicing darts without much skill. "Who plays that." "Bally-what?" says Scott a little distractedly -- it's always to tell where he's looking, but his head is twisting toward the dartboard, too, then tilting to a TV up over the bar. He glances back at his beer to take a second sip, then reaches around the napkin dispenser to slide a beer mat under it, flicks another one like an air hockey puck to bop off the pitcher toward Joshua. "Oh, is it an instrument? Beats me. Maybe I should pay attention during the concerts." He probably doesn't mean this. Joshua drops his stein as the mat slides near, pinning it before it reaches the edge of the table. "Yeah, it's --" He's miming a kind of guitar strumming motion. "But. Weird. Triangle. No idea where it's from." His eyes dart to Scott, and there's a small twitch at the side of his mouth. "... nah. Don't think you need to punish yourself for this." Even so, the dry note in his voice is shifting to a thoughtful one: "... what's hiring look like. For next year." "Oh, I know what a triangle is," Scott says with some relief, though -- "Huh. Dunno where that's from either." The beermat makes it significantly less annoying that now he's very slowly rotating his beer in front of him, ninety degrees at a time; he wears a small smile, though after a moment this twitches a little tighter. His words come out half-attached to a long exhale -- "I know. -- I mean, I don't know, sorry, I --" he huffs out another breath. "Hard to hire for this line of work. Jean wants to get class sizes back down, but --" the smile is gone by now, as Scott tilts his head a little dourly at Joshua, "Don't know how much that will help on your side of things, these are uncharted waters for us. I don't think we're ever not hiring." Joshua is nodding again, through a long slow exhale. His eyes are fixed on the slow motion of Scott's glass. "Not gonna find another Matt anywhere." He plucks up a napkin and uses it to wipe condensation from his glass, then balls the thin damp paper tight in his palm. "Feel like Monster Jobs should be way better for our purposes than it is." Scott just grimaces -- he stops messing with his beer only to take a slow sip, and licks the foam off his lip. Monster Jobs surprises an honest (if short) laugh out of him, and then he is back to twisting his glass. "Yeah," he says. "Most things aren't made for our purposes, we just jury-rig something that works." He tilts his head down at his hand resting on the table, the index finger tapping quietly at the edge of the beer mat. "Usually works." Joshua huffs, quiet and amused. He's squeezing the little napkin even smaller before setting it down, and still carefully watching Scott's glass. The next time the glass has made a full rotation he's flicking his napkin with a forefinger, lodging it directly through the handle of the stein. He does not actually fistpump, but his quiet hmm sounds as pleased as if he had. "We'll make it work."