saveourearth | [Closed Log] Totally-Not-A-Date [BACKDATED]

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[Closed Log] Totally-Not-A-Date [BACKDATED]

Date: August 16th
Where: The Coffee Lab on Turner St.
Who: Walter and Jim

The old brick facade of the building is contrasted by the neat, modern graphics that adorn the shop front. The charcoal black and baby-blue colour scheme works around the natural wood of the tables and counters, emphasized by the hulking black espresso machine and the sturdy blue mugs that everything is served in.

Above all else, the Lab is welcoming, an Oasis of air-conditioning, Coffee and Chocolate (Sweet, sweet Cocoa) for everyone to enjoy. The Baristas are a small team that work well together, chatting and bantering behind the bar when they're not serving customers. A few of them belong to the university, but at least two are more mature, one Italian guy with an impressive handlebar mustache being one of the most obvious.

Jim's sitting on a table near the back in a nook just under the staircase to the store room, a piping hot Americano swirling in front of him as he stirs in the sugar.

He's just waiting for a response to his text to Walter, letting him know he's here.

"At a table in the back, lmk what you want to drink :)"

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After having fun at the Arcade, Walter had had little trouble getting back into his work - adjusting to being Numbered was an eternal work-in-progress, it felt, and if asked he would have said it suited him just fine - but he'd never forgotten about that promise of meeting up with Jim to have coffee.

The hundred hours of community service was far from the worst thing that could have happened to his new friend; it certainly guaranteed they could still meet up for things like this.

OMW. Cocoa's fine. ;)

He'd worried juuust a little about if the emote had been too much - but for him, it had still been milliseconds, rather than whole minutes like it would have taken if he'd composed a similar text five years or even five months ago.

Jim's at the counter when Walter walks in, speaking fluent Italian with Alberto, the well built mustachioed batista at the pass out.

Jim's attention skips to Walter when he walks through the door, the rattle of the small wooden wind-chime catching the breeze as it's opened enough to make him look up.

With a small wave Jim picks up the large, almost bowl like, piping mug of hot chocolate that Berto hands him, motioning for Walter to walk with him to the table.

"Hey buddy, it's good to see you again. Everything's been crazy lately, huh?"

And Walter was quietly noting that Italian... He was going to end up picking some up himself, soon, he decided.

That's certainly a unique mug! Walter's first instinct was to use a napkin to hold it, rather than burn his hands - but no; the drink wasn't the important thing here; Jim was.

"Almost an understatement, really, but it's good to see you too, Jim," Walter replied.

Even with the heat of the mug, he's very much smiling as they walk to their table.

"Not drowning in assignments at work, are you?"

Jim picks up a couple of napkins and some sachets of sugar for his coffee, collecting the little dish of Marshmallows Berto passes him with a wink and smile. Evidently he knows about Jim's sweet tooth.

They settle into the wooden, cushioned benches in the nook and Jim almost immediately goes chin-in-palm to support his head with the table. He looks, honestly, exhausted.

"Yeah, it's an understatement alright," he sighs as he dumps three of the brown sugars into his drink, stirring the teaspoon about it lazily.

"Nah. Work isn't the problem much, and the community service isn't that bad to be honest. I get to work with the animals which is cool, and Bones refuses to let anyone else but me pick him up which is surprising, to be completely honest." He takes a pause to take a long sip of his black coffee, humming low in appreciation as it goes down smooth.

"No, this is more the problem." He rummages around in his mag bringing out a rolled up length of blueprint, slicking off the rubber band that holds it in place, spreading it out on the table, an A3 sheet of unlikely builds.

"You know I said I remembered the schematics for the Future ford? Yeah, I wasn't joking." He passes it over to Walter for him to take a look at. Everything there is in place, from each panel to the wiring to the circuits.

"I'm trying to piece together what you guys have been saying on the Network... Echoes, right? I'm just... trying to figure out who's echoes I'm getting and from where or when the hell they were." This is the thing that's been keeping him up so much.

Walter's more of a Whipped Cream man, himself, but marshmallows and cocoa just go well together, frankly.

"You managed to grow on Bones after all; congrats," he remarks as Jim takes his sip - he can't help a glance at Jim's throat, though hell if he knows why he does - and the remark is genuine rather than wry.

He makes to take a sip of his own, only to be distracted by those... very intricate papers.

"Wild," is the first response to come to mind.

"This can't have been built on modern-day Earth - you mentioned the twenty-third century earlier, didn't you?"

One hand comes up to carefully trace some of the curves, the circuitry.

"Some of these kinds of pieces don't look like they exist yet, and the materials..."

The fade-out is deliberate.

Jim is just relived that Walter seems to see the same thing that he does.

"Yeah, I've never heard of Dilithium being used in this kind of context, nor do I have any fucking idea what half of these chemical notations are. They just... It can't exist right now. Unless this car was made when quantum material production exists? Which it might, yeah, in the twenty third century." He runs his hand through his hair, the stubble on his chin is edging toward beard territory and he sighs.

"I'm not sure what kind of use this knowledge is. I guess I won't know until I've got more context." More coffee. He stayed up for a few nights solid to get this all done.

"It might be from a whole other universe, if it's that fundamental a change."

Or science as a whole progresses a lot; there's nothing to really ground them in the types of worlds these memories are coming from.

Turtles and magic rituals...

Walter looks back up from the blueprints, eyeing Jim's face.

"When was the last time you slept?"

It's a subject change, sure, but it's also an important question - to him, at least.

Edited 2018-09-06 00:24 (UTC)

"You say that, But Sadie's eyes haven't ever been seen on humanoids in this Universe, nor has your particular uptick in brain processing speeds. There's... this can't be what we thought it was previously. It's not some hookey government thing we thought it was. This is something else entirely. I'd say aliens, but give me another month or so and I think I'll have 'remembered' enough to rule that out." He says, air quotes and everything.

Instead of answering Walter's last question, Jim lets out a long 'eeehhhhh?' instead.

It's been like... a while. He just drains the rest of his coffee.

Walter awkwardly looks off to the side as he thinks it over, takes a sip of his (quite good, really) cocoa...

Then rubs at his temples with his free hand.

"What if you do remember aliens, though? What's next, gods? Quantum corruption?"

He recovers enough to read Jim's own tells, however.

"I'm not saying this isn't important... but so's being able to de-stress and rest."

"So like... I already saw an Alien, or at least a Human Variant. I don't know who he is yet, or what he is, but I know that he's important to the dude these echos belong to." To me, he thinks, remembering the look on Spock's face as he felt his body succumb to the radiation. Anyone who looks at another person like that is important to me.

"Hey, Maybe I'll break a timeline or something. That could be fun." He laughs, almost a little bit deliriously.

"Now that I've got this out of my system I might just crash. Maybe. I've got a big client project coming in after that bursary came in."

Walter just blinks at that - or he would, if his words didn't come out fast enough.

"Maybe his timeline breaking is why you have his memories?" he suggests.

The cocoa's going to have to wait, but Walter quietly nudges a marshmallow at Jim's hand instead.

"If I have to watch over you to make sure you sleep, I'll do it."

He wouldn't have let himself say it if he didn't mean it, but man does a part of him feel... something, about saying it.

Jim just shrugs, running a palm down his tired, tired face.

He half-heartedly bats at the marshmallow, but ends up just plopping his hand half on Walter's one.

"Can't sleep. Too much to do." Don't want to feel that nightmare again.

OH HEY HAND HOLDING. Walter brushes aside his feelings on the matter for the moment.

"Boy, do I know how that feels."

He sighs, glancing again at the blueprints.

"Ever tried white noise?"

Jim's response is as follows: He folds his arms onto the table, drawing Walter's hand into the folds between his forearms, and uses them as a pillow.

He grumbles something unintelligible.

His breathing starts to even out.

Well.

That's.

Certainly a solution.

After a second's worth of controlled panic, Walter looks around to get the shop owner's, a barista's, anyone's attention.

"Is there a place we could lay him down? Carrying him out of here just... seems like a bad idea somehow."

Also, none of this is going to end up being to-go, he can tell.

Alberto is the one that sees their predicament from the pass, and he silently cracks up laughing, which in turn gets the attention of the rest of the staff.

This is evidently a regular enough occurrence that the rest of them just roll their eyes and smile.

"Si, Si, Jim is like this sometimes, no? Though, now is more lately happening." He places a large hand down on Jim's shoulders and shakes him, but all he gets is a grumble and a half-hearted smack for his efforts.

Alberto looks unfazed by this and turns to Walter.

"Do you drive? I can take him into car?"

Walter sighs. He is not surprised in the least that this has become Jim's normal.

"I don't have a car here in Mossgate, no."

He had grown somewhat reliant on public transit in London...

"And I'd rather not try putting him on a bike with me, for his sake."

"This is okay," Berto chuckles.

"I will take him, I have done before. I will take you as well, then he knows how he is of get home." He nods to himself in decisiveness, and goes to get his jacket and keys.

Looks like you're gonna have an I prompt u visit to Jim's house, Walt.

Walter makes to pull his hand back, then thinks twice and stays put for now.

Thank goodness he didn't actually take his bike here, then...

"I'm glad you've been here for him, before."

Jim seriously needs people looking out for him - but then, doesn't everyone?

Berto scrunches his face and waves Walter off.

"Do not be silly. Jim is help fix coffee machine many times, save me lots of money. This is least of the things I can do in return." He says, and then proceeds to get behind Jim, swivel him over the bench and lifts him up in a princess hold. Jim, in his exhaustion-based delirium puts up the minimal amount of protest and promptly falls back asleep again.

"I take to car, please follow."

Walter smiles a bit more openly at that, because somehow that sounds exactly like something Jim would do.

He's able to more easily extract his hand from Jim's grasp, and nods at Berto at his last remark.

"No problem."

Then he quietly picks up Jim's cup, his own, and tucks the bag of marshmallows under his arm.

"Should I leave the drinks on the counter?"

"Si!" He calls from out of the staff door. A barista smiles and tells him they'll take care of it, don't worry, and starts to gather up the drinks.

It's not too far from Jim's house, a five minute drive if that, but Berto insists that the both of them are strapped in for the ride.

Berto pulls up to a gate that opens when he comes close enough to it. The driveway isn't long, but the gate is high enough to stop other people from parking on Jim's property and wow, what a property it is. If Walter didn't know how much money his friend had before, he definitely does now. Jim's only ever worn moderate clothing and his car is a relatively old Ford Focus that just sits there on the driveway. No wonder he was so insistent that he'd be able to take care of Bones. He could probably easily house three rabbits on the front garden alone.

Berto Man-handles Jim to his front door and Jim jsut about manages to fish his keys out, unlock the door, and stumble face first into a sofa.

Berto gives Walter a look that conveys 'what can you do, huh?' and pats him on the shoulder.

"Let me know when he is awake, Let him know to text me. It is nice meet you, Walter." He smiles, but he has a shop to run so he can't stay long.

So now, Walter's in this big ass house with a Jim snoring lightly on the sofa.

Regardless of what Jim does, Walter has no argument with buckling up.

Staring out - full-on staring, he's genuinely surprised at the size - at Jim's house, Walter thinks that If Jim hadn't tried taking one from the petting zoo, he'd have been able to keep the rabbit.

Maybe having a pet would mean he'd sleep more regularly, too...

"Will do," he says, without missing a beat.

"And it's nice to meet you as well, Berto."

He'll probably be seeing the man more often.

The house's door closes, and Walter realizes he... really doesn't know what to do next. Not exactly a first, for him.

So, curling up on the nearest furniture, he settles in to watch over Jim.

If the man's sleep is untroubled for the next five minutes, maybe he'll let himself explore the house.

Jim is face first into a cushion right now, hanging over the arm of the sofa. It looks like he's going to be pretty out of it until someone tries to wake him.

Walter focuses internally on breathing, trying to think at least a little more on those blueprints, before walking over and touching Jim's shoulder lightly.

"I would not be surprised in the least if you chose right now to wake up," he said, voice seeming surprisingly loud to him.

It must have been how empty the house felt...

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I really need to catch Jim up on network stuff tbh...

o7

Re: o7

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Aaaah. ;; And I've been playing as if Walter HASN'T seen the 'oh yeah, I saw me die.' thread.

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