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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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...

Jim doesn't wake up, but something like a wounded noise catches itself in his throat at the touch.

It's loud. Too loud for the quiet, quiet house.

Aaaand all thoughts of exploring the house are now gone, because what was that noise Jim are you okay is this a nightmare???

So Walter just gently moves his hand to Jim's other shoulder.

"Jim?" he asks, volume not matching that of the other man's sound in his mind.

Maybe he should have brought a white noise maker...

Jim doesn't seem to respond to any outside stimulus. Instead, the nightmare only seems to pull him in deeper as the noises he makes become more pained, more like words that sound like 'sorry', 'hurts', 'stop!'.

It's not a simple matter to just wake someone from a nightmare, Walter knows. But the urgency of the situation is growing by the second...

He's kneeling by Jim's face, now - not too close, God knows crowding him would be a bad idea - but he tries to calm his own pulse, and rub Jim's back (what he can reach, anyway) in soothing, regular strokes.

It's the point of contact between him and Walter that startles him awake. There was no soothing counterpoint in his dreams, and in that confusion, he struggles his way back to consciousness.

He starts, falling off the edge of the sofa and locking himself into a defensive position. His heart is racing and all he can hear is the sound of his own laboured breathing and his pulse. It takes a couple of seconds for him to realise where he is, for his breathing to slow, for his muscles to relax. As soon as that happens he feels the familiar taste of bile rise up in his throat, and he belts off to the bathroom.

Walter leans back, edging away while trying to prevent the worst of Jim's fall.

"Jim?" he asks, and his throat suddenly feels blocked - and then his friend is up and moving, and he can gauge enough out of his expression to give him a head start on that run.

Walter hasn't gotten to explore the house yet, after all, and it'd be a real bad idea to not get Jim where he needs to go.

Thankfully there's a small closet bathroom on the ground floor that Jim gets to just in time before he's dry heaving into the loo.

It's not a pretty sight.

Walter spends the time waiting for Jim to finish wincing in sympathy, keeping his hands busy by continuing to rub the man's back and trying to commit every detail of the place to memory.

Not the dry heaving, though.

Jim doesn't recall doing from dry-heaving to full on sobbing, and he hates it. Hates that he's crying in the first place at all, hates that he doesn't know why the fuck this is happening to him, why he's remembering these things.

He loathes it.

At some point, Walter starts humming.

It's not a complex tune, and God knows he hasn't sung anything since long before he came back to Mossgate, but it's slow, melodic, and an attempt at being comforting.

They can loathe what's been happening together, but that doesn't mean they can't make anything good happen, either.

At some point, Jim gasps, coming back to himself all at once. It's fucking painful, is what it is. He lets out a miserable sounding groan, finally lifting his head up to find Walter right there. Oh dicksticks.

"I am... so sorry."

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