The lessons of slumming
Shit. I think it'd be better if I did hurt more right now; then I might learn my lesson about not letting ego and testosterone take the wheel. Where was my brain tonight?
Jensen was nervous enough about my wanting to do some bar-hopping downtown. He was almost actually angry when he caught up with me and realized what happened. Good bodyguard; Harper trained him well. He all but shoved me into the car and took us back to the clubhouse, then roused Holland to give me a medical once-over. I was fine. I am fine.
No crippling aches. No lasting pains. The tingling aftermath of riding the lightning, that's about all of it, along with the black joys of self-recrimination bouncing through my head as I showered, got a massage, soaked in the sauna, hydrated outside and in my battered body - tried to salvage the evening, tried to turn away from the encounter as if it hadn't happened, for the sake of my reputation and my lies.
Idiot. He's that sparkplug of Magneto's, has to be, and now he can pad back to his master to tell him all about the interesting secrets I've spent so many years trying to hide. Idiot.
. . . But oh, sometimes it does feel good to let go and be who I was meant to be, flesh and blood and bone. If only it didn't have to be secrets, hiding, all this paranoid bean-counting of every word and thought and gesture. If only.
4/26/2006
Logfile from Shaw of X-Men MUCK.
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It's a shitty little bar in a shitty little corner of New York City, on the dogleg of Hell's Kitchen that's lifted for a contemptuous piss on hoity-toity Chelsea next door. The ceiling hangs low over the ugly, jumbled furniture -- even lower, in fact, with a false ceiling of heavy-hanging cigarette smoke both fresh and days old (maybe older; fresh air has not seen the interior here since the last time the Mets were any good). The patrons look just as mismatched, just as wizened and discarded: skinny thugs of a half-dozen ethnicities, a couple neighborhood bums nursing their first liquid refreshments of the evening. Two bartenders don't have much to do at this hour, so the man is telling some elaborate and incomprehensible joke to the woman, who looks bored and amused in equal amounts. Her bottle-blonde frowziness almost disguises the good bones and relative youth that mark her for a wasted beauty, but at least one man in the joint has taken notice: the big dark lug in layers of faded casual wear planted at one end of the bar with a Miller Lite and a bowl of nuts in front of him. Shaw pulls a drink from the former and pops one of the latter, then gestures the woman down his way with a smile of slow snaky charm.
One taken notice? Please. A bulky form sits not far from Shaw, with bright blue eyes resting unwaveringly on the female bartender, and a glas of something unknown sitting in front of him; not the first. A small smile sketches over his lips, as a pair of fingers gesture for her attention. Aprroval sits deep within his eyes.
The woman sighs and drawls in a rich local accent, "Well, ain't I just the luckiest girl tonight." Her hands go to her hips; her brown eyes in their racoon rings of mascara and liner rest on Shaw and then Padraig and then Shaw again. She tells the Irishman, not unkindly, "He got me first, loverboy. You just wait your turn." As she ambles down to him, he slits a triumphant sneer to the younger man.
"Oh, -please-," Padraig scoffs, lifting a brawny hand to dismiss Shaw with simple jerk of wrist. "What's a queue when there's an accent and a devoted man in play?" Blue eyes sketch over-- shoot a warning towards the dark-haired man.
"Maybe you aren't tipping enough," Shaw suggests, also kindly, if the almondine kiss of arsenic could be said to be kind. "You sound new to the country, so I'll let you in on a little hint." He elbows the bar, half-turning towards Padraig (and away from the blonde 'tender's resigned eye-roll at all the damn testosterone), to continue, "In America, which is where we are, service workers don't get paid the ridiculous amounts in your European high-tax clusterfucks. Tips are good. Got it?"
"Tips are what lepers leave," retorts the Irishman, flashing a mirthful grin, that does not lack a vicious streak. "Besides, sounds to me like you're trying to buy a whore. Some of us prefer -real- women." A glance skirts askance, ensuring that people know who he's talking about.
Shaw chuckles and waves the woman off, now that he has a second beer, uncapped and ready to go, standing next to his first one, which he picks up for a longer drink. And the woman puts her hands back on her hips and sniffs at Padraig. "A real woman? But if he's tryin' to buy me, you're sayin' I'm the whore. So which is it?"
"I'm sayin'" says Paddy, lifting a tiny salute of his beer, "that some people are too retarded to recognise the difference between a whore and a beauty." Trademark grin flashes, lighting the chiselled face to a -total- attention upon her. Coy, almost, is the look.
She laughs easily, lightly, no ingenue but a veteran of these games, this kind of night (over and over again, every night) . . . yet grants him the point by twinkling a worn-out smile his way and twitching her hips as she joins him. "So, tell me whatcha want, then?" Shaw casts rolling eyes at the ceiling, the low and heavy ceiling, and supposes rhetorically to it, "Women love Neanderthal ad hominem attacks on men of refinement and taste. God, who knew?"
Padraig reaches a hand out, a silent, palm-upward offer. "You tell--" Attention shifts. "Imeacht gan teacht ort," comes a gutteral uttering. "Lot of dickheads in here, no?"
The gesture draws the male bartender's attention, and he throws over, "You need any help, Tracie?" Who answers him, "No," and then tells Padraig through a more professional smile, "Yeah, could say that," with a slight tilt of the head toward her coworker for including him in the tally. "I don't speak whatever that is, though. You gotta tell me what you want in good old-fashioned English. 'Nother drink?"
"Irish gaelic," says Padraig, smiling. His look again directs full attention to the 'girl'. "Depends what you mean by drink." A hand flutters to the other bartender, dismissive and arrogant in its twist.
"Probably doesn't mean herself, laddie," Shaw puts in cheerfully.
Body shifts now; riding high towards a a testosterone-fulled threat. "-Certainly- doesn't mean you." Blue eyes lock that way; a threat's hint behind the smile.
Shaw returns a bland black gaze: the visual riposte all but sounds audibly in the air between them, swords sliding off each other with a thin metal shriek. He makes an unconcerned show out of picking out just the /right/ nut from his little bowl, crunches it, swallows, and beams approval at Tracie for her step back from the bar. She says, though, to both of them, "You guys need me here for this?" She spreads her hands and looks bored again. "I'm just doin' my job, not refereeing a cock fight. Do got a ruler 'round here somewhere, though, if y'wanna settle it for once and for all."
"Seems some dillcheese doesn't know when to fuck off," Padraig shrugs to Tracie, regretfully, though eyes betray a violent promise to Shaw, brightening to an almost luminescent blue. "I'd love to. I'm a man of words, myself, though."
"It's nice to have a fall-back position," Shaw tells him, kind again, so /very/ kind, "for when the grunting and mouth-breathing run out." Dark hilarity informs his expression, cut sharply cruel under the strokes of their standoff. Tracie just throws up her hands and retreats down the bar to tend to the pair of Puerto Rican gentlemen calling for her attention.
"Oh!" Padraig exclaims, lifting a hand to his chest. "You hurt me so, sir!" He lifts his glass, draining it in a swift movement, and comes to his feet with the same. "Shame so many pussies are all gob."
Shaw's hand tightens around his beer, that ready brown-glassed cudgel, and sits back on the stool with a foot kicked up on its lower rung. Tipping his head curiously, he studies this young Irish cock o' the walk, then decides, "Not worth it," and turns back to the bar, lifting a heavy shoulder in slow, scornful dismissal.
The Northern Irish lilt skims back, as Padraig wanders towards the exit, swaggering and arrogant. "Puuussy," he singsongs, "No balls to walk outside!"
"I am too fucking old for this shit," Shaw mutters and looks up at the ceiling once more. He stares at it, tired but tensed -- then snaps a hot black look down the bar at the watching 'tenders and Puerto Ricans, pair and pair alike. "What? You don't have something better to do right now? Drink your goddamned drinks; that's why you're in this miserable shithole."
Padraig stalls at the door, turning, and looks at Shaw, derisive and mocking. Lips purse, and knees bend to a mocking, camp language of body. He blows a kiss.
The watchers' eyes snap to Padraig's display, and Tracie hides a grin behind her hand. The Puerto Ricans start making soft Spanish bets between each other. Shaw glowers at them. At her. At Padraig. At the whole damn bar. "Fine," he growls and kicks off the stool, which jolts into the bar and adds another scar to the wood. Hands clenched at his sides, he stalks toward the exit, apparently prepared to push right past -- or through -- the Irishman to get outside and get this over with.
Padraig is moving out and away, towards the darkest alley, the quietest spot, but not before lifting a two-fingered salute to the others present. He moves, not bothering to wait to see who follows, until he comes to a halt in the alleyway. Hell's Kitchen's darkest, piss-stinking worst. Then, slowly, he turns.
Shaw faces him. Shaw sighs. Shaw says, "Look. Kid. You've had your fun. I'm sure you could go back in there and spread her wide open like a magazine, so you've had your woman, too." He shakes his head, a slow gesture that accentuates the refined words, the passive stance. His hands are even loosening out of their fists, and he looks the other man dead in the eye with a small, rueful smile. "We're done, all right? I don't want to kick up a fuss, God knows."
Slowly, a dark brow lifts, over an amused expression. "Old man's too cowardly to kick off? It's fine." A smirk spread easily. "You really want me to walk out there, shoulders high and proud, and mock your ass to oblivion? You'll never walk this district again without shame, pussy."
"It's all the same to me," Shaw replies with a shrug. Now he sounds annoyed, like a big dog trying to catch Z's on a porch while a yapping, dancing puppy won't leave him alone. Looks bored, though the spark in his eyes suggests that's just a mask over something darker and truer in his gut. "Go back in and tell them you beat me into a pulp. What do I care? They didn't recognize me; it's no skin off my nose."
"Oh, -please-," Padraig repeats, metro to the end, as he lifts a dismissive hand. "Don't play condescending with me." Head cocks, the puppy's intrigue. Now he mocks, lilting tone skipping through a cadence of derision. "You care because the little Irish whelp beat you to the pussy, big boy. Shame you;re too scared to follow through."
With another sigh, Shaw folds his arms over his chest and inquires, genuinely curious, "Are you trying to make me mad? You're the one who wanted this and keeps /poking/ at me." Disgust smears a sneer over his shadowed features, casting them into deeper, bolder lines. "All talk, no walk. Fine. Catch you later, asshole."
"I'm -trying-," says Padraig, with a teacher's tone, "to let you hit me first, so you've got a chance." Then he walks, all arrogance and fearlessness, towards Shaw.
"'Let' me?" And Shaw laughs, and the sound bounds and rebounds in a hilarious ricochet against crumbling brick above and sewage-sunk asphalt below. "Oh, for the love of-- Good/bye/, young man. Go take out your frustrations on someone else; I don't have the time for it." Then /he/ turns to walk away, arms dropping out of their fold into pistoning swings at his side, bracketing the tall, tense line of his back.
Padraig smirks, now, given full opportunity and offer. No real anger prevalent, but the Irishman suddenly drives forward, footsteps almost silent as he drives a fist towards Shaw's kidney. Not hard, and prepared to dance away. A warning blow.
Shaw staggers forward, less from the blow's momentum and more from the surprise that makes a fool's goggle-eyed mask out of his face as he turns it back around to Padraig. Slowly his body follows, broad and blunt and tense as hell. Through clenched jaws, he grits, "So, stupid as well as cocky. How did you ever survive this far into your misbegotten life?" He doesn't allow time to respond, however, to such a solicitous inquiry: before he's even finished talking, he's already stepping up and into the Irishman's space, driving a roundhouse punch ahead of him as his calling-card.
Face darts back, but a foot comes up; natural relfexes and a year's traininign serve the Irishman well. "Puuuu-" The foot strikes. "sssyyyyy."
Shaw's momentum pulls him into the blow against his knee, which crumples and nearly takes him down with it. Panting, the man scrambles in that direction, to his right, and straightens up a wary distance away. "You know," he comments almost conversationally, "the insults don't speak well of your self-esteem or maturity. Unless you really did escape from a junior high school." A smile sleeks over his mouth, lowers his eyelids in a mockery of amusement -- and mockery of Padraig, too, absolutely. "Maybe I'd better call your mother so she can come pick you up, huh?"
The Irishman straightens easily from the kick, and flashes a grin, sparking with a vicious bent. Eyes sheen with bright blue, despite the light-- still not quite their own. "You mock," he dismisses, "but you fail to connect. Best not call my mum-- she'd kick your ass too." Then he's driving forward, preparing a series of rapid, abortive attacks.
"Only if you smack the dick out of her mouth first," Shaw taunts, but saves the rest of his breath for fending off the first of the attacks. Which he does, behind a meaty forearm's swiping shield; however, the next, and the next, and next and next -- "/Shit/" -- break his defenses, batter his arms and side of his face and ribs. He falls back under the torrent, aims a couple counter-punches . . . but mostly falls back, toward the nearest wall over the ground's messy, stinking cover.
Padraig presses, raining blow after uncharged blow on the other man, using a boxer's skill to aim abortive then attacking strikes on the other. "She'd -- bite -- it -- off," he snarls, as he moves, though the grin in place betrays a feral joy.
Shaw bares his teeth in reciprocating primal display. "Fuck off," he spits -- literally: spittle does fly, but it's white and clean, no blood. No marks, either, on his face, which he turns just in time to absorb a punch to the jawline rather than the eye. Turns it back, and the saved eye glowers chthonically with the temper that coils up out of his retreat and launches him on the offense. A slam of fist aimed at Padraig's shoulder, followed quick -- so damn quick! -- by a whipped leg-sweep.
Fist connects, driving a brawny shoulder backwards with a grunt, although leg's sweep is avoided with a backwards ride. The Irishman pulls back futher, a single leg providing a skipping pair of roundhouses, each leaving a trail of blue sparks in the air. When he land, he growls, "Rat's got some balls when cornered."
"Just want to go home," Shaw growls back, but pro forma: his eyes are wide and wondering on the sparking trail that keeps him back even better than the kicks do. They get a half-hearted feinting dodge; the sparks get most of his attention. His gaze snaps narrowed and blazing with their own reflected light to Padraig's face. "You a freak? Oh, God. Of course. Of /course/. Mutie come out of the woodworks to pick a fight with the mean man on TV--" Again, he doesn't finish, but launches full-out (perhaps, perhaps) at his opponent in a blur of more kicks, another few hamhock-fisted punches, and the speed, the reflexes, the heavy rain of violence turned against the younger man.
"Who the -fuck- do you think you--" Almost nonchalantly, Blitz avoids the first blows, dipping aside with those literal lighting reflexes. Fists begin to dance with the telltale blue, as the Irishman suddenly switches from defense; caring nothing of himself, and a frenzied series of blows slam forwards. Shaw's fists crack against flesh and bone, until the Irishman connects properly, grapsing at flesh and channeling. Hard.
Shaw gives the only answer he can: a back-pedal away from lightning's lash, the reflected-blue glow of grimacing teeth and eyes. He doesn't try to defend himself, either, although he's not on offense. He simply is. He stands, he absorbs the blows, he doesn't even sway under their rapid percussion. When the storm passes, he says very quietly and very clearly, "Do tell me when you've finished. This gets old, fast."
The Irishman stand, unfazed by damage to himself, but motionless. "How the -fuck- are you still alive?" Incredulous.
Shaw smiles. Doesn't reply except to fold his arms again. Tweak the line of his shirt a little, as a sartorially aware gentleman would.
"You're a fucking -mutant-," Padraig spits, sideways.
"I'm sure you'd like to think so." Shaw bobs his shoulders, but his eyes hold a wariness belying that nonchalance. He plants his feet a little wider apart, bracing his stance, then blows out a slow breath. "/Have/ you finished, little mutie?" Arrogance, pure and rich as claret. "We grownups have things to do, places to see, horribly restrictive and punishing laws to pass against naughty children like you."
"-No- fucking human survives that," Padraig responds, darkly, amused through battle's waning fury. "You're quick, and tough--" A sudden grin flashes. "Want a drink?"
Shaw actually looks tempted, or gives a passable imitation thereof. He shakes his head. "Been there, done that," and he makes it nicer than he could have. (Not out of breath. Not a scratch on him, anywhere.) "Go in and give my love to Tracie if you want. You've earned it, my lad."
Heavy breathing is distinctly not present at the other end. "Are you trained, or just fast?" he wonders, with narrowed eyes. A sneer drifts to his lips. "Don't patronise me, or I'll fry you where you stand, big boy."
The corners of Shaw's mouth twitch upward. "Thought you already tried that."
"I tried what'd kill a normal human," returns the Irish lilt, viciously. His right hand erupts-- a cascade of rippling blue sparks. "There's a lot more, but I'd rather not kill a member of the species."
Shaw shrugs again. "Go ahead, then. I'm as human as the next guy, and oh, dear, I do have a mouth on me, speaking back to one of the noble Homo superior." His hands unfold into a wide embrace of the night and the sparkling, crackling opportunities it's presenting to him. His smile stays, even edges up and out into a thin, skinned grin. "Give me your best shot, freak. I've earned it, right? You're the master here. You're the big guy. You win. Just /prove/ it."
"Shake my hand," Padraig says, levelly. Challenges.
"Fine, have it your way, sir." Shaw draws out the honorific in slurring mockery -- stops short of tugging his forelock, if only because his hair is still mostly in its ponytail -- and steps forward. His eyes stay on Padraig's, and his hand meets that hand without qualm or shiver of fear.
Padraig lets his natural charge ripple through to begin, with a growing smirk. "Pull away, if you can." Eyes alight, and the flow grows, rapidly beyond a human's endurance. He stares into black eyes, gripping and increasing electrical flow with a growing frown of concentration.
Shaw grips back, but . . . but. As the current ramps higher, and his body's muscles start seizing and jerking (small ones, then the long sinews of legs and back), he tries to pry himself away, at first with some self-possession and then more urgently. Not /quite/ frantically, although the whites of his eyes are showing.
Padraig ceases the flow, letting his smirk spread wider. "You ain't no human, boyo," he mocks, lilting a bad Welsh accent. "What's the power?"
Holding that hand in his other, close to his midriff, Shaw shakes his head. "You have me all wrong," he drawls back; his accent snuffs piqued inland hill-country through New York's clipped polish. "Anyone can stand a little juice. People get hit by lightning all the time and live, and your punches--" He makes a rude noise. "Please. I've had worse bumping into the coffee table in the morning."
"You'd be cut to fuck," Padraig replies, smirking. "Show me your hand."
"Like hell." Shaw keeps it, thank you.
"Show me," Padraig replies, levelly, though eyes focus on spots struck.
Shaw doesn't. He tucks his hands into his jean pockets under the untucked flap of his layered shirts and stares evenly back at the younger man. No challenge, no taunting -- just cold composure. Certainty.
"Too scared to admit it to another mutant?" Padraig wonders, with great amusement. "Fuck you, buddy. Now leave."
The certainty stretches a small smile across Shaw's face, and before he does go, he bows. Makes a full, formal leg, in fact, with arms gracefully outstretched in balance to his swoop over the foot leaned long before him. "Thank you, sir," he murmurs as a goodly humble serf should, straightens, laughs eyes' black scorn at the Irishman -- and drives a fast punch, on a faster step forward, into his ribs with bone-cracking force. "Seriously: thank you. It was grand. Do take care." A jaunty little wave, and he's off, whistling into the dark that swallows him as if he'd never been.
A grunt tears out at fist's connection, with an audible snap of an oft-punished rib cracking under the sudden force. Padraig merely smiles-- grimaces-- and breaks into a laugh. Derision sneers lips, and he calls out, "See you later, honey!" After a long moment, the Irishman begins to walk; homeward bound into the murky, black night.
[Log ends.]
Jensen was nervous enough about my wanting to do some bar-hopping downtown. He was almost actually angry when he caught up with me and realized what happened. Good bodyguard; Harper trained him well. He all but shoved me into the car and took us back to the clubhouse, then roused Holland to give me a medical once-over. I was fine. I am fine.
No crippling aches. No lasting pains. The tingling aftermath of riding the lightning, that's about all of it, along with the black joys of self-recrimination bouncing through my head as I showered, got a massage, soaked in the sauna, hydrated outside and in my battered body - tried to salvage the evening, tried to turn away from the encounter as if it hadn't happened, for the sake of my reputation and my lies.
Idiot. He's that sparkplug of Magneto's, has to be, and now he can pad back to his master to tell him all about the interesting secrets I've spent so many years trying to hide. Idiot.
. . . But oh, sometimes it does feel good to let go and be who I was meant to be, flesh and blood and bone. If only it didn't have to be secrets, hiding, all this paranoid bean-counting of every word and thought and gesture. If only.
4/26/2006
Logfile from Shaw of X-Men MUCK.
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It's a shitty little bar in a shitty little corner of New York City, on the dogleg of Hell's Kitchen that's lifted for a contemptuous piss on hoity-toity Chelsea next door. The ceiling hangs low over the ugly, jumbled furniture -- even lower, in fact, with a false ceiling of heavy-hanging cigarette smoke both fresh and days old (maybe older; fresh air has not seen the interior here since the last time the Mets were any good). The patrons look just as mismatched, just as wizened and discarded: skinny thugs of a half-dozen ethnicities, a couple neighborhood bums nursing their first liquid refreshments of the evening. Two bartenders don't have much to do at this hour, so the man is telling some elaborate and incomprehensible joke to the woman, who looks bored and amused in equal amounts. Her bottle-blonde frowziness almost disguises the good bones and relative youth that mark her for a wasted beauty, but at least one man in the joint has taken notice: the big dark lug in layers of faded casual wear planted at one end of the bar with a Miller Lite and a bowl of nuts in front of him. Shaw pulls a drink from the former and pops one of the latter, then gestures the woman down his way with a smile of slow snaky charm.
One taken notice? Please. A bulky form sits not far from Shaw, with bright blue eyes resting unwaveringly on the female bartender, and a glas of something unknown sitting in front of him; not the first. A small smile sketches over his lips, as a pair of fingers gesture for her attention. Aprroval sits deep within his eyes.
The woman sighs and drawls in a rich local accent, "Well, ain't I just the luckiest girl tonight." Her hands go to her hips; her brown eyes in their racoon rings of mascara and liner rest on Shaw and then Padraig and then Shaw again. She tells the Irishman, not unkindly, "He got me first, loverboy. You just wait your turn." As she ambles down to him, he slits a triumphant sneer to the younger man.
"Oh, -please-," Padraig scoffs, lifting a brawny hand to dismiss Shaw with simple jerk of wrist. "What's a queue when there's an accent and a devoted man in play?" Blue eyes sketch over-- shoot a warning towards the dark-haired man.
"Maybe you aren't tipping enough," Shaw suggests, also kindly, if the almondine kiss of arsenic could be said to be kind. "You sound new to the country, so I'll let you in on a little hint." He elbows the bar, half-turning towards Padraig (and away from the blonde 'tender's resigned eye-roll at all the damn testosterone), to continue, "In America, which is where we are, service workers don't get paid the ridiculous amounts in your European high-tax clusterfucks. Tips are good. Got it?"
"Tips are what lepers leave," retorts the Irishman, flashing a mirthful grin, that does not lack a vicious streak. "Besides, sounds to me like you're trying to buy a whore. Some of us prefer -real- women." A glance skirts askance, ensuring that people know who he's talking about.
Shaw chuckles and waves the woman off, now that he has a second beer, uncapped and ready to go, standing next to his first one, which he picks up for a longer drink. And the woman puts her hands back on her hips and sniffs at Padraig. "A real woman? But if he's tryin' to buy me, you're sayin' I'm the whore. So which is it?"
"I'm sayin'" says Paddy, lifting a tiny salute of his beer, "that some people are too retarded to recognise the difference between a whore and a beauty." Trademark grin flashes, lighting the chiselled face to a -total- attention upon her. Coy, almost, is the look.
She laughs easily, lightly, no ingenue but a veteran of these games, this kind of night (over and over again, every night) . . . yet grants him the point by twinkling a worn-out smile his way and twitching her hips as she joins him. "So, tell me whatcha want, then?" Shaw casts rolling eyes at the ceiling, the low and heavy ceiling, and supposes rhetorically to it, "Women love Neanderthal ad hominem attacks on men of refinement and taste. God, who knew?"
Padraig reaches a hand out, a silent, palm-upward offer. "You tell--" Attention shifts. "Imeacht gan teacht ort," comes a gutteral uttering. "Lot of dickheads in here, no?"
The gesture draws the male bartender's attention, and he throws over, "You need any help, Tracie?" Who answers him, "No," and then tells Padraig through a more professional smile, "Yeah, could say that," with a slight tilt of the head toward her coworker for including him in the tally. "I don't speak whatever that is, though. You gotta tell me what you want in good old-fashioned English. 'Nother drink?"
"Irish gaelic," says Padraig, smiling. His look again directs full attention to the 'girl'. "Depends what you mean by drink." A hand flutters to the other bartender, dismissive and arrogant in its twist.
"Probably doesn't mean herself, laddie," Shaw puts in cheerfully.
Body shifts now; riding high towards a a testosterone-fulled threat. "-Certainly- doesn't mean you." Blue eyes lock that way; a threat's hint behind the smile.
Shaw returns a bland black gaze: the visual riposte all but sounds audibly in the air between them, swords sliding off each other with a thin metal shriek. He makes an unconcerned show out of picking out just the /right/ nut from his little bowl, crunches it, swallows, and beams approval at Tracie for her step back from the bar. She says, though, to both of them, "You guys need me here for this?" She spreads her hands and looks bored again. "I'm just doin' my job, not refereeing a cock fight. Do got a ruler 'round here somewhere, though, if y'wanna settle it for once and for all."
"Seems some dillcheese doesn't know when to fuck off," Padraig shrugs to Tracie, regretfully, though eyes betray a violent promise to Shaw, brightening to an almost luminescent blue. "I'd love to. I'm a man of words, myself, though."
"It's nice to have a fall-back position," Shaw tells him, kind again, so /very/ kind, "for when the grunting and mouth-breathing run out." Dark hilarity informs his expression, cut sharply cruel under the strokes of their standoff. Tracie just throws up her hands and retreats down the bar to tend to the pair of Puerto Rican gentlemen calling for her attention.
"Oh!" Padraig exclaims, lifting a hand to his chest. "You hurt me so, sir!" He lifts his glass, draining it in a swift movement, and comes to his feet with the same. "Shame so many pussies are all gob."
Shaw's hand tightens around his beer, that ready brown-glassed cudgel, and sits back on the stool with a foot kicked up on its lower rung. Tipping his head curiously, he studies this young Irish cock o' the walk, then decides, "Not worth it," and turns back to the bar, lifting a heavy shoulder in slow, scornful dismissal.
The Northern Irish lilt skims back, as Padraig wanders towards the exit, swaggering and arrogant. "Puuussy," he singsongs, "No balls to walk outside!"
"I am too fucking old for this shit," Shaw mutters and looks up at the ceiling once more. He stares at it, tired but tensed -- then snaps a hot black look down the bar at the watching 'tenders and Puerto Ricans, pair and pair alike. "What? You don't have something better to do right now? Drink your goddamned drinks; that's why you're in this miserable shithole."
Padraig stalls at the door, turning, and looks at Shaw, derisive and mocking. Lips purse, and knees bend to a mocking, camp language of body. He blows a kiss.
The watchers' eyes snap to Padraig's display, and Tracie hides a grin behind her hand. The Puerto Ricans start making soft Spanish bets between each other. Shaw glowers at them. At her. At Padraig. At the whole damn bar. "Fine," he growls and kicks off the stool, which jolts into the bar and adds another scar to the wood. Hands clenched at his sides, he stalks toward the exit, apparently prepared to push right past -- or through -- the Irishman to get outside and get this over with.
Padraig is moving out and away, towards the darkest alley, the quietest spot, but not before lifting a two-fingered salute to the others present. He moves, not bothering to wait to see who follows, until he comes to a halt in the alleyway. Hell's Kitchen's darkest, piss-stinking worst. Then, slowly, he turns.
Shaw faces him. Shaw sighs. Shaw says, "Look. Kid. You've had your fun. I'm sure you could go back in there and spread her wide open like a magazine, so you've had your woman, too." He shakes his head, a slow gesture that accentuates the refined words, the passive stance. His hands are even loosening out of their fists, and he looks the other man dead in the eye with a small, rueful smile. "We're done, all right? I don't want to kick up a fuss, God knows."
Slowly, a dark brow lifts, over an amused expression. "Old man's too cowardly to kick off? It's fine." A smirk spread easily. "You really want me to walk out there, shoulders high and proud, and mock your ass to oblivion? You'll never walk this district again without shame, pussy."
"It's all the same to me," Shaw replies with a shrug. Now he sounds annoyed, like a big dog trying to catch Z's on a porch while a yapping, dancing puppy won't leave him alone. Looks bored, though the spark in his eyes suggests that's just a mask over something darker and truer in his gut. "Go back in and tell them you beat me into a pulp. What do I care? They didn't recognize me; it's no skin off my nose."
"Oh, -please-," Padraig repeats, metro to the end, as he lifts a dismissive hand. "Don't play condescending with me." Head cocks, the puppy's intrigue. Now he mocks, lilting tone skipping through a cadence of derision. "You care because the little Irish whelp beat you to the pussy, big boy. Shame you;re too scared to follow through."
With another sigh, Shaw folds his arms over his chest and inquires, genuinely curious, "Are you trying to make me mad? You're the one who wanted this and keeps /poking/ at me." Disgust smears a sneer over his shadowed features, casting them into deeper, bolder lines. "All talk, no walk. Fine. Catch you later, asshole."
"I'm -trying-," says Padraig, with a teacher's tone, "to let you hit me first, so you've got a chance." Then he walks, all arrogance and fearlessness, towards Shaw.
"'Let' me?" And Shaw laughs, and the sound bounds and rebounds in a hilarious ricochet against crumbling brick above and sewage-sunk asphalt below. "Oh, for the love of-- Good/bye/, young man. Go take out your frustrations on someone else; I don't have the time for it." Then /he/ turns to walk away, arms dropping out of their fold into pistoning swings at his side, bracketing the tall, tense line of his back.
Padraig smirks, now, given full opportunity and offer. No real anger prevalent, but the Irishman suddenly drives forward, footsteps almost silent as he drives a fist towards Shaw's kidney. Not hard, and prepared to dance away. A warning blow.
Shaw staggers forward, less from the blow's momentum and more from the surprise that makes a fool's goggle-eyed mask out of his face as he turns it back around to Padraig. Slowly his body follows, broad and blunt and tense as hell. Through clenched jaws, he grits, "So, stupid as well as cocky. How did you ever survive this far into your misbegotten life?" He doesn't allow time to respond, however, to such a solicitous inquiry: before he's even finished talking, he's already stepping up and into the Irishman's space, driving a roundhouse punch ahead of him as his calling-card.
Face darts back, but a foot comes up; natural relfexes and a year's traininign serve the Irishman well. "Puuuu-" The foot strikes. "sssyyyyy."
Shaw's momentum pulls him into the blow against his knee, which crumples and nearly takes him down with it. Panting, the man scrambles in that direction, to his right, and straightens up a wary distance away. "You know," he comments almost conversationally, "the insults don't speak well of your self-esteem or maturity. Unless you really did escape from a junior high school." A smile sleeks over his mouth, lowers his eyelids in a mockery of amusement -- and mockery of Padraig, too, absolutely. "Maybe I'd better call your mother so she can come pick you up, huh?"
The Irishman straightens easily from the kick, and flashes a grin, sparking with a vicious bent. Eyes sheen with bright blue, despite the light-- still not quite their own. "You mock," he dismisses, "but you fail to connect. Best not call my mum-- she'd kick your ass too." Then he's driving forward, preparing a series of rapid, abortive attacks.
"Only if you smack the dick out of her mouth first," Shaw taunts, but saves the rest of his breath for fending off the first of the attacks. Which he does, behind a meaty forearm's swiping shield; however, the next, and the next, and next and next -- "/Shit/" -- break his defenses, batter his arms and side of his face and ribs. He falls back under the torrent, aims a couple counter-punches . . . but mostly falls back, toward the nearest wall over the ground's messy, stinking cover.
Padraig presses, raining blow after uncharged blow on the other man, using a boxer's skill to aim abortive then attacking strikes on the other. "She'd -- bite -- it -- off," he snarls, as he moves, though the grin in place betrays a feral joy.
Shaw bares his teeth in reciprocating primal display. "Fuck off," he spits -- literally: spittle does fly, but it's white and clean, no blood. No marks, either, on his face, which he turns just in time to absorb a punch to the jawline rather than the eye. Turns it back, and the saved eye glowers chthonically with the temper that coils up out of his retreat and launches him on the offense. A slam of fist aimed at Padraig's shoulder, followed quick -- so damn quick! -- by a whipped leg-sweep.
Fist connects, driving a brawny shoulder backwards with a grunt, although leg's sweep is avoided with a backwards ride. The Irishman pulls back futher, a single leg providing a skipping pair of roundhouses, each leaving a trail of blue sparks in the air. When he land, he growls, "Rat's got some balls when cornered."
"Just want to go home," Shaw growls back, but pro forma: his eyes are wide and wondering on the sparking trail that keeps him back even better than the kicks do. They get a half-hearted feinting dodge; the sparks get most of his attention. His gaze snaps narrowed and blazing with their own reflected light to Padraig's face. "You a freak? Oh, God. Of course. Of /course/. Mutie come out of the woodworks to pick a fight with the mean man on TV--" Again, he doesn't finish, but launches full-out (perhaps, perhaps) at his opponent in a blur of more kicks, another few hamhock-fisted punches, and the speed, the reflexes, the heavy rain of violence turned against the younger man.
"Who the -fuck- do you think you--" Almost nonchalantly, Blitz avoids the first blows, dipping aside with those literal lighting reflexes. Fists begin to dance with the telltale blue, as the Irishman suddenly switches from defense; caring nothing of himself, and a frenzied series of blows slam forwards. Shaw's fists crack against flesh and bone, until the Irishman connects properly, grapsing at flesh and channeling. Hard.
Shaw gives the only answer he can: a back-pedal away from lightning's lash, the reflected-blue glow of grimacing teeth and eyes. He doesn't try to defend himself, either, although he's not on offense. He simply is. He stands, he absorbs the blows, he doesn't even sway under their rapid percussion. When the storm passes, he says very quietly and very clearly, "Do tell me when you've finished. This gets old, fast."
The Irishman stand, unfazed by damage to himself, but motionless. "How the -fuck- are you still alive?" Incredulous.
Shaw smiles. Doesn't reply except to fold his arms again. Tweak the line of his shirt a little, as a sartorially aware gentleman would.
"You're a fucking -mutant-," Padraig spits, sideways.
"I'm sure you'd like to think so." Shaw bobs his shoulders, but his eyes hold a wariness belying that nonchalance. He plants his feet a little wider apart, bracing his stance, then blows out a slow breath. "/Have/ you finished, little mutie?" Arrogance, pure and rich as claret. "We grownups have things to do, places to see, horribly restrictive and punishing laws to pass against naughty children like you."
"-No- fucking human survives that," Padraig responds, darkly, amused through battle's waning fury. "You're quick, and tough--" A sudden grin flashes. "Want a drink?"
Shaw actually looks tempted, or gives a passable imitation thereof. He shakes his head. "Been there, done that," and he makes it nicer than he could have. (Not out of breath. Not a scratch on him, anywhere.) "Go in and give my love to Tracie if you want. You've earned it, my lad."
Heavy breathing is distinctly not present at the other end. "Are you trained, or just fast?" he wonders, with narrowed eyes. A sneer drifts to his lips. "Don't patronise me, or I'll fry you where you stand, big boy."
The corners of Shaw's mouth twitch upward. "Thought you already tried that."
"I tried what'd kill a normal human," returns the Irish lilt, viciously. His right hand erupts-- a cascade of rippling blue sparks. "There's a lot more, but I'd rather not kill a member of the species."
Shaw shrugs again. "Go ahead, then. I'm as human as the next guy, and oh, dear, I do have a mouth on me, speaking back to one of the noble Homo superior." His hands unfold into a wide embrace of the night and the sparkling, crackling opportunities it's presenting to him. His smile stays, even edges up and out into a thin, skinned grin. "Give me your best shot, freak. I've earned it, right? You're the master here. You're the big guy. You win. Just /prove/ it."
"Shake my hand," Padraig says, levelly. Challenges.
"Fine, have it your way, sir." Shaw draws out the honorific in slurring mockery -- stops short of tugging his forelock, if only because his hair is still mostly in its ponytail -- and steps forward. His eyes stay on Padraig's, and his hand meets that hand without qualm or shiver of fear.
Padraig lets his natural charge ripple through to begin, with a growing smirk. "Pull away, if you can." Eyes alight, and the flow grows, rapidly beyond a human's endurance. He stares into black eyes, gripping and increasing electrical flow with a growing frown of concentration.
Shaw grips back, but . . . but. As the current ramps higher, and his body's muscles start seizing and jerking (small ones, then the long sinews of legs and back), he tries to pry himself away, at first with some self-possession and then more urgently. Not /quite/ frantically, although the whites of his eyes are showing.
Padraig ceases the flow, letting his smirk spread wider. "You ain't no human, boyo," he mocks, lilting a bad Welsh accent. "What's the power?"
Holding that hand in his other, close to his midriff, Shaw shakes his head. "You have me all wrong," he drawls back; his accent snuffs piqued inland hill-country through New York's clipped polish. "Anyone can stand a little juice. People get hit by lightning all the time and live, and your punches--" He makes a rude noise. "Please. I've had worse bumping into the coffee table in the morning."
"You'd be cut to fuck," Padraig replies, smirking. "Show me your hand."
"Like hell." Shaw keeps it, thank you.
"Show me," Padraig replies, levelly, though eyes focus on spots struck.
Shaw doesn't. He tucks his hands into his jean pockets under the untucked flap of his layered shirts and stares evenly back at the younger man. No challenge, no taunting -- just cold composure. Certainty.
"Too scared to admit it to another mutant?" Padraig wonders, with great amusement. "Fuck you, buddy. Now leave."
The certainty stretches a small smile across Shaw's face, and before he does go, he bows. Makes a full, formal leg, in fact, with arms gracefully outstretched in balance to his swoop over the foot leaned long before him. "Thank you, sir," he murmurs as a goodly humble serf should, straightens, laughs eyes' black scorn at the Irishman -- and drives a fast punch, on a faster step forward, into his ribs with bone-cracking force. "Seriously: thank you. It was grand. Do take care." A jaunty little wave, and he's off, whistling into the dark that swallows him as if he'd never been.
A grunt tears out at fist's connection, with an audible snap of an oft-punished rib cracking under the sudden force. Padraig merely smiles-- grimaces-- and breaks into a laugh. Derision sneers lips, and he calls out, "See you later, honey!" After a long moment, the Irishman begins to walk; homeward bound into the murky, black night.
[Log ends.]