iterumrp | Where's InDeed when you need it?

Entry tags:

Where's InDeed when you need it?

Who: Regulus and Sam
What: Regulus needs help and he’s finally hit the point of asking for it
When: now
Where: Starts at Sam’s
Rating/Warnings: Probably low

Regulus tapped a tight, sharp knock on Sam’s door with one hand while holding a paper in his other hand.

And as soon as the door opened, he was talking.

“I think the newspapers here are broken.”

He probably should have mentioned how he needed some help interpreting what he read in the paper, but clearly, it was the paper that was defective, not he.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sam seriously considered grabbing her revolver before she opened the door. It wasn't like she had any friends. And she'd just outed herself as a vampire for the whole fucking multiverse a few days back. The only thing that stopped her was the grim realization that the angry mob with torches and pitchforks probably wouldn't knock. Angry mobs weren't that polite.

Well, maybe angry mobs in Canada. But this definitely wasn't Canada.

When she opened the door, her eyebrows shot up, disappearing behind the plastic fringe of her wig. She glanced back and forth between Regulus and the newspaper. And then pulled back on the door with one hand, planting the other on her hip. "I'm sorry," she said, nodding for him to come inside, "I don't remember ordering a hot guy on Door Dash."

A reference that was probably lost on him. But sometimes, Sam needed to make jokes just for herself. It kept her from getting too glitchy.

"What's wrong with the paper?" she asked.

How to freeze Regulus in his steps: Sam addressing him.

Because he did not know what Door Dash was and was a bit taken aback at the directness of her evaluation of his appearance.

"Wha-" he stumbled over the word as he backfooted it into Sam's apartment. He wondered silently when he would feel comfortable in this world.

He didn't so much recover as he just simply moved on. He held up the paper once inside, displaying the front page picture.

"None of the pictures move."

None of the pictures move.

Sam let go of the door, allowing it to swing shut behind her, with a swift knock of her heel.

Her apartment was already beginning to break away from the pristine simplicity of the Tower's furnishings. For one thing, several chairs were broken. For another, she'd taken it upon herself to redecorate the windows. The high, glass walls facing the outside were painted over, replacing the city's skyline with a silhouette of Los Angeles. The skies above were painted in swirls of purple, red, and blue. To the untrained eye, the patterns were random. But in reality, they were double helixes, splitting apart and pouring out their contents like stars in the sky.

As for the rest? There was clothing scattered. Art supplies. Broken glass from her initial arrival and tantrum. Nothing was in place. No chairs tucked in.

In short, the ideal home of a belligerent artist.

"Exactly how are the pictures supposed to move?"

He'd been so focused on the problem of the unmoving pictures that Regulus had missed the details of the state of Sam's room- At first.

"Yes, the people, they should be moving. Around in the picture," he moved a hand to gesture at the front page picture. "In and out of frame when they want to."

In between looking back and forth from the paper to Sam he caught a glimpse of the room and paused, finally turning around as his eyes moved from one disaster to the next.

"You live here?" A mixture of shock and judgment for sure.

Sam raised an eyebrow, folding her arms across her chest. "You live here too," she pointed out. "Just six floors up."

She supposed she could understand how her chaos would be off-putting. And if he had phrased it that way, maybe she would have been more forgiving. But he made it sound like she was living in a van down by the river.

Honestly, between the two Black brothers, she preferred Regulus. But he was beginning to push it. She could see how they were related.

Best to avoid a fight. So she walked over to him and grabbed the newspaper, spreading it out on her kitchen countertop, heedlessly shoving pencils and craypas out of the way. She looked at the pictures on the front page for a moment. "Okay, so, admittedly, I prefer the internet. But I know how newspapers work. And I've never seen one where the pictures move before."

Shh, don't tell the Black brothers they are related. They cannot handle such scathing truths.

He stepped gingerly over to the kitchen counter, making sure not to step on anything and add more to the chaos and mess.

"What's the internet? How have you never seen the pictures move before?" He still looked out at the world through Wizarding-centric glasses, he was so sheltered, it was quite painful, actually. For everyone, most definitely for the people around him.

She held up a finger. "Yeah, we're going to save the conversation about the internet for another day." Or else, she was in danger of saying 'Okay Boomer' a little bit too much, which wouldn't get them anywhere.

"As for never seeing pictures move before," she continued, flipping the pages of the newspaper, ink smearing over her already messy fingers, "that's not a thing they do. If you want to see a picture move, you have to watch a video." Or GIF, but she didn't want to get into the weeds of that one.

Shitballs, even Avery knew the difference between a paper and a YouTube clip.

"Newspapers are the lowest tech solution to a lot of problems. It's just paper and ink. You want more, you have to upgrade to a computer." She glanced up at him. "And I'm not sure you're ready for that."

"Yes, it is. They do do that," Regulus said, adamantly. "I don't need to watch a vid-thing, whatever that is." That was not a word that circulated around the elite circles of Wizarding society. And the fact he didn't understand what a video was was clear indication that he was not ready to be introduced to a computer.

Vampires didn't get migraines. So why did Sam feel one coming on?

"Okay," she said. "Let's look at this from a different perspective." A 'certain point of view,' as they said in Space Wars. "Pictures in newspapers don't move here. This whole shitshow of a place has its own set of rules. I mean, normally, roads take you out of a town. They don't here. Normally, you wake up in your own bed. You don't here. So...using the transitive property...let's just work under the assumption that newspaper pictures don't move here."

She tilted her head sharply to one side. "Kay?" she asked with a dagger-like smile.

Regulus scrunched up his face because he didn't like this reality where nothing made sense. But he completely looked past Sam's sharpness because he didn't feel he had to acknowledge it.

Then he did a double take.

"This place is making you wake up in other beds?" A small amount of concern snuck into his voice.

"I mean...I woke up here," she said, gesturing out to her messy apartment. "And I definitely didn't go to sleep here so..."

It really wasn't the point, but at least he'd let go of insisting that fucking newspaper pictures were supposed to move.

Small steps.

"Look here," she said, flipping to the page with the classified ads. "We were talking about this the other day, weren't we?"

He glanced down at the page she'd turned to. He did come over here for a reason after all.

"Alright... so what does," he dipped his head closer to read one of the first entries. "What do these acronyms mean?"

Sam ran her finger down the columns. "Well, let's start with the basics. 'FT' means 'full-time' and PT means 'part-time.' Full-time jobs, you're looking at forty hours a week. Part-time is...less." Which might normally matter for benefits and shit.

Although Sam wasn't sure that health insurance was a thing in the City.

Frankly, it didn't matter to her, so she hadn't really looked into it. She would have to make a point of asking around the hospital. Just because she was a dick, that didn't mean she didn't care about other people.

Usually.

How much did he need to work? He had shelter and clothing, he was young enough that he didn't even think about health. So, he needed food and... he didn't even know what he needed outside of that.

"How much do you work?" Maybe he could gauge what he needed by seeing how Sam structured her life.

"Full time," she said. "Mostly on the night shift."

The thing was, she wasn't the best template to follow. Sam had very few expenses. Mostly just blood and art supplies. At some point, she supposed, she might need more clothes, but for now, she was pretty set.

The reality of it was that Sam liked having access to the lab equipment. She could conduct some experiments in her downtime. Already, she'd begun trying to do some analysis to figure out why the sun here didn't impact her the way it did back home. It was slow, tedious work--especially without any other Dragons to help her out. But it was keeping her grounded.

Anyway, Regulus would probably have more expenses, so she figured she'd try to set some kind of...shit...good example.

Oh, the guy was fucking doomed.

Lacking anyone one else to follow, Regulus nodded, taking the information in at face value and as if Sam had all the answers.

"So... I should find a full-time job. Is a night shift better?"

"Depends on when you want your free time, I guess," she said. "And how early you want to wake up or how late you want to go to bed."

Which was a non-answer, she supposed. But she didn't exactly have the scientific data to back up any kind of choice.

On second thought...

She gave him a quick once-over. "You might also want to consider whether you want to return home in the daylight or in the dark..."

The closest thing Regulus had to help him conceptualize 'free-time' verse 'work' was Hogwarts. When in school, he knew when he had to be in class, and what he had to do for class outside of class, and then everything left over was time he could spend how he wanted (provided he didn't get caught breaking the rules).

And thinking about it that way, he still came up without a preference for day work or night work.

"I know about the shadows," he said. "They don't really scare me." And he meant it, such was the confidence in his own magical abilities. Working under the cover of night had been his life for the last year and a half.

"I guess..." he sighed, "Maybe I should look at this from what my skills are?"

Sam used to think she knew about the shadows.

And then she was fucking murdered by a couple of vampires--she didn't even know which one was ultimately responsible--and ended up in this fucked-up limbo of existence.

All she did was shrug. "Okay." She scanned the first posting. "Here's a listing for a cab driver. Do you know how to drive a car?" It was a pretty low bar, but she knew plenty of New Yorkers who never bothered learning. "All you have to do is pick people up and drop them off...where ever they ask."

Wait. Which side of the road did they drive on in England?

Regulus drew back as if he'd been shocked with a jolt of electricity.

Regulus can always make the bar go lower.

"I've never even ridden in one!" he said.

It would be a bad fit all around, even if he didn't have some lingering purist prejudices about muggle inventions. He'd also have to figure out how to act around, well, muggles. Which was a work in progress for him. A month and a half living in this new city, displaced from his privileged comforts, and forced to exist alongside muggles just wasn't enough time to toss him into a customer service-facing job. He'd get no-star reviews every time, or nearly so.

Maybe he should start by telling Sam what he was good at.

"Anything for someone who is good with charms or the magical application of numbers or wards or... curse breaking?"

The look she gave him was less one of shock and more one of pity. While she was hardly any kind of gear head--doubly so after the way she saw Max use his machines to rip people apart--she absolutely loved cars. Or maybe it was just that she liked going fast. Either way, she was pretty sure the poor boy had no idea what he was missing.

Okay, hierarchy of needs.

Get him settled first. Then show him the wonders of the internal combustion engine.

She turned back to the newspaper for a moment, a little line forming between her eyes before she paused, halfway down the first column. "Well, it's not exactly a magical application of numbers, but it looks like this shop is looking for a cashier." Leaving nothing to chance, she decided to fill in the rest. "That's the person in charge of taking someone's money, calculating their tab, and making change."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Where's InDeed when you need it?

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject