#phoenixspirits reuben

[feralego]

@phoenixspirits liked for a starter from pippa!

          She’s up as far on her toes as she dares to go, but she still can’t reach the bottle of strawberry vinaigrette dressing on the top shelf. Setting herself back down, flat footed, she very nearly begins to tear up as she looks down at the basket of greens and salad toppings she’d come in for, for the salad her pregnancy cravings had been demanding all day.

          A part of her wants to give up. To just go back around putting everything in her basket back on the shelves, and to go home empty-handed. But the cravings won’t let her. Not when she’s this close to their satisfaction.

          Her face is hot with embarrassment as she hunts down the nearest person taller than herself: a nice looking man with dark hair and sensitive eyes. She feels guilty for approaching him.

          “Hey, I’m-- I’m sorry to bother you? But I can’t find an employee to help me, and I-- I can’t reach something in the next aisle over. Could you help?” She pauses, worrying her lip with her teeth. “It’s no problem if you’re in a hurry, I can just keep looking for someone...”

          Pippa’s confidence hasn’t always been so low. In fact, it had been at it’s peak just months ago, when her--then, now ex--boyfriend had suggested they have a baby together. But since then, and since she’d begun to show, he’d just... disappeared. Taking her sense of security and confidence with him.

          Before she’s even given him a moment to respond to her, she begins to turn back the way she’d come, skittish.

         “Actually, you know, I-- I think I heard someone a couple a few more aisles down. I’ll ask them,”

[cluecrue]

@phoenixspirits from here:

     “Oh. Oh! That’s brilliant though,” Reuben declares immediately, judgement dropping away to reveal a somewhat impressed smile poking through. “I see what you mean now.” Reuben always used to get praised for his work ethic in school, but this guy puts THAT to shame for sure.       “At least that’s the interesting kind of paperwork. I just get stuck with incident report forms and accidental damage forms and risk assessments. I ask you, what exactly is the point of a risk assessment for a planned activity when nothing in the field ever goes to plan? Your risk assessment goes out the window, then you have to fill out incident forms to explain why. Sometimes I think those nutters who complain about health and safety gone mad have got a point.”       Did that turn into a bit of a rant? Perhaps. He smiles again at Frank, a bit more sheepishly, nudges him with an elbow. “At least we live in the age of computers, ey? Imagine how many filing cabinets you’d own by now.”

He smiles amicably and tries not to think about the moisture collecting under his arms, while simultaneously reminding himself not to gesticulate too much, or to raise his arms above his head.

Reuben's superiors surely know about the Network, but if they haven't told him about Frank's occasional work for them, Frank doesn't want to be the one to clue him into its existence. Especially not on accident.

( Joe would never let him hear the end of it, never mind what the Network itself would have to say about the slip up. )

Onto other things. Quickly.

"Thanks." Despite him using it as a heel turn, it is a serious point of pride for him. He's worked long and hard on his system, and he's grateful to have that acknowledge. Giddy, even. "I'd love to show you sometime, if it might help you with your own records. It-- It takes a little time to get the framework set right, but it's worth it."

He could talk about it for hours, but he restrains himself; continues the back and forth of their conversation.

"Oh my god," Frank groans, commiserating genuinely. "I can't imagine having to deal with all of that." He can; it's not pretty. "With the way Joe is, there's no one on this Earth creative enough to stay ahead of him for proper risk assessment. And he's just one guy: you've got to account for... however many."

Frank Hardy is an old soul, and sometimes--despite his tendency toward skepticism of such things--he wonders if he'd lived a life prior to this one that had bled over into this one to make him that way. Wonders if he'd been a man buried under mountains of manila folders and newspaper clippings, hedged in by a towering labyrinth of moss green filing cabinets. Wonders if he'd carried a heavy ring of jingling key to all of those cabinets with him like a ball and chain

He's had some very distinct nightmares like that.

"I don't want to think about that." He very nearly shivers, feeling his skin prickling in a wave up his arms and down his back, raised hairs brushing the cotton of his shirt. "I really don't want to think about that. The four I had--" packed full to bursting "--were more than enough."