Logs:Second Thoughts

Second Thoughts
Dramatis Personae Lily, Definitely Joshua
In Absentia Joshua	2023-03-08 I bet the labs got mad perks for the doctors.
Location <NYC> Chimaera Arts - Dumbo
This is just one of the many abandoned warehouses in DUMBO, and like many of them it has recently changed hands. Unlike most of those, however, it does not have some corporate developer's sign out front promising a transformation into luxury condominiums or a boutique shopping center or the latest concept restaurant. Instead it's marked by a piece of weathered but wildly colorful plywood propped up on a stack of broken pallets, which reads "Chimaera Art Space!" above "chimaera.org" in smaller letters. The warehouse is moderately large and decorated with graffiti art in various styles--some of it recognizable as the work of renowned local street artists. A pair of monstrous scrap metal sculptures, perhaps still works in progress, flank the entrance. The building itself has undergone significant renovation recently, complete with wiring, plumbing, and a modular partitioning system. The grounds, too, have been cleaned up, ramshackle fences torn down and rusting detritus removed in favor of reclaimed (and brilliantly repainted) outdoor furniture ringing an impressively engineered firepit. It's twilight, the cool outside air turning cold with the fading sunset. Folks enjoying the International Women's Day art build in the courtyard are moving ever so slightly closer to the firepit or abandoning their pieces entirely for warm drinks and wind-proof workspaces inside. The core of event programming here is winding diwn but it's still bustling in the warehouse with artists at work and medics prepping for evermore rallies, marches, and protests. Lily is carefully distancing herself from the medics tonight -- she shares a couple of greetings, a few small-talk conversations, but her orbit is far from the supply checks. She's in black barrel cut jeans with a silver chain attached to the belt loop, paintsplattered boots, and a green-black flannel shirt, wearing a light backpack with her scrubs visible through a gap in the zipper and holding a canvas tote. Every room she ducks into she leaves a little emptier, her bag a little more full. Now she emerges from the woodshop, frowning at the tote and the steel-toed boots she's holding loose in her other hand. She pauses at an empty table and begins to empty the tote -- a lumpy hand-made mug, a set of wooden coasters, several tupperwares with her name taped across them, other odds and ends -- before sticking the boots into the bottom of it. Has Joshua been over with the medics? It seems likely enough -- at least, now, he's ambling down from the upstairs storeroom, in jeans and sturdy boots, a zip-up NYCAM hoodie open over an absolutely hideous rose-colored tee shirt reading BAD and 'BOOZIE - Adele's Bachelorette Party 2015!' beside a cartoon margarita glass, plain grey kippah today. He drifts over toward Lily's table, dropping himself heavily into one of its empty seats. He picks up the mug, brows hiking questioningly to Lily as he turns it over in his hand. "You make this?" Whether or not he was with the medics, Lily doesn't seem surprised to see Joshua here in general. Not that surprised that he ambles her way, either. "Yeah. There was a pottery-as-meditation workshop. Wasn't much good at either." She tucks the plastic containers into the bag next. "Must have made that... two years ago, almost." Her voice is quiet when she looks up, not up to Joshua's face but to the rim of the off-white, off-center mug. "Always meant to try that one again. Not the meditation. The pottery." "I bet the labs got mad perks for the doctors. Wellness stipend. Group bonding events. Swank pottery classes. Make something less..." Joshua does not finish his thought, but he is looking at the lumpy mug critically before putting it back down. "Might be time to take the meditation back up, too." The critical look on Lily's face is a little softer when she inspects the mug, running her fingertips over the many many pockmarks in the glazed surface. "Last time, the main perks were endless coffee and free printing." Her voice is only just barely wavering. "And I don't think I'm going to be doing a lot of group bonding. Does meditation help with doing --" Lily cuts herself off, fusses with setting the mug in her tote instead. "Even we get endless fucking coffee." Joshua's eyes linger on the mug, tracing the path of Lily's fingers against its blemishes. "I'm shit at meditation," he says with a snort. "But it helps." The twitch of his lips is brief. "With some shit. Maybe not team building exercises with sadistic mad scientists. That one you'll have to figure out on your own." He looks up from the mug, fixing a curious look on Lily. "What -- is it you plan to. Uh. Study." “Maybe you’d be good at it. Want to switch sides of the bench? I’ll give you my ID they’ll never notice.” Lily has been standing, but at Joshua’s words some will to keep on her feet drains away. She slumps into another chair, picks up the set of coasters to futz with instead. “I don’t really want to think about it,” she says to the wooden square in her hand. “… probably. Continue my old stuff. Mechanisms of X-Gene expression. That’s real wide though, I could — pitch some other stuff, maybe. I don’t know.” Runs her finger over the corner. “I don’t — know if it’s better for us to be interacting regularly or not. Probably I can modify the proposal around that.” Now her eyes lift to Joshua. “You got a couple weeks to figure out your preference, at least, before I have to tell someone there.” "I could pass as you easy." Here, an amused smile flits across Joshua's face. It flees again swiftly. He braces a palm against the edge of the table, pushing back so that his chair tips up on its rear legs. "Mechanisms of X-Gene expression." His fingers press down hard -- too hard, fingerbeds paling near to white -- as he grips the edge of the table. "That'd definitely get us good. Quality. Time together." His eyes have turned up, now, searching the beams and rigging hardware criss-crossing the ceiling. "You got a couple weeks to figure how to put your game face on while you're cutting me up. Is not thinking about it going to help you sell the --" His other hand waves vaguely toward Lily. Lily sucks in a breath through her teeth. "You could. I could go lie low with my sisters. Why didn't you suggest that earlier." There is no serious question in these flat hypotheticals. She's shuffling the coasters -- they clatter together in her hand as Joshua continues. “If Lucien wants a good actor he should have volunteered himself.” Lily is paling even as some bite creeps into her tone. "... would be easier if it wasn't you. You can still..." A small shrug of her shoulder. "You weren't asked to do this." "I'm suggesting it now." Joshua's hand is still squeezed deathly tight against the table, his eyes steadily fixed upward. "Bet there's a lot of labcoats with Tonys. They'd buy that, sure." His chair falls heavily to the ground, his gaze snapping back to Lily. "Wasn't asked. Just figured..." For a second it seems that this, too, might go the way of so many of his sentences and lapse into nothing -- but he does, finally, summon up the rest of the words: "This was your world before. How do we know you won't. Change your mind. Want to stay." The coasters tumble out of Lily’s open hand into the tote bag, clattering into the side and against the mug and shoes instead of the neat stack she was trying to make. Her eyes snap up to Joshua, wide and hurt. Just stares, jaw working, mouth opening and closing but no sound coming out. Drops her attention down to the bag, takes it by the straps and stands. “… You wanted to supervise me. That — I shouldn’t — should have…” Lily sucks in a shaking breath. When she speaks again, her tone is almost as flat as Joshua’s. Almost. “I am sorry. For putting you in that position. And for not…” Her grip tightens on the straps of the tote. “…I should finish packing.” Joshua(?)'s eyes go just slightly wider. "I mean, with your history we..." He trails off, shaking his head. "Didn't you say a couple weeks, I --" He's swallowing as he stands, not looking at Lily now but down at the table. "Guess it figures you'd be eager to go." And with that, poof! He is gone. “I’m not,” Lily starts, voice tight, “eager, I just…” She looks up — no Joshua. Back down the bag, filled with the physical markers of her presence in this warehouse for the last two years. Continues in a mumble to the bag of evidence, eyes only now beginning to water; “…wanted a head start on disappearing.”