Who: Holly Page & Noah Anderson What: Welcome to Limbo When: Saturday 27th Jan [Backdated] Where: The Garage Rating: G
The garage at Limbo was impressive, to say the least. They had all manner of vehicles on hand for missions only, unfortunately, but it was still a good collection. Holly wandered in here sometimes and thought about how much Scott would like this place, how he’d enjoy getting his hands in the engines and telling her about how all of the various pieces worked.
She’d taken to wandering down into the garage - or the armoury and using the firing range - when she was feeling restless. After her somewhat unsuccessful attempt at getting her new team to sign up willingly to training sessions, she wanted to unwind. Lucas was occupied so her general go-to of either knocking back shots or bitching whilst trying to punch each other wasn’t happening. The next best thing was to just wander and find something to shoot. Or to see if there was finally a tank in the garage she could climb inside and shut herself in to ignore the world for a while.
Turned out there was still no tank but there was a person. He looked young, well, younger than her and had a mop of red hair. He was also three-quarters into an engine. Her first instinct was to call him out, get him to confirm who he was, but she saw what looked like an ID badge hanging half out his back pocket so just walked up behind him. As she got closer, the top edge of his ID badge showed and she recognised his face from the incoming personnel files that had been circulated earlier. She hadn’t been expecting him to start so soon, though.
This kid had been a marine before coming here. Gods, he was so young. Did he know anyone yet or had he just thrown himself straight into working?
“Noah, isn’t it?”
Holly wasn’t wrong, Noah was new, very new, to Limbo that was. Not so much to the Regiment, but Limbo was a new assignment. Apparently they were in need of somebody with his skills and wasn’t like he got much choice in the matter but a new place, new people, not exactly a bad thing. He had in fact thrown himself head first (literally and figuratively) into his work especially as the garage was like a dream come true, so many vehicles of different sorts, and he could really sink his teeth into his new role.
He was buried head first and pretty much waist deep in an engine, not at all phased or bothered by the fact he was getting covered in all kinds of filth and grease, not when there was a faulty connection to fix. A faulty connection which if it happened to have some sort of a bad day could set the entire truck on fire and that just didn’t bear thinking about.
So fixed on what he was doing he neglected to notice the sound of approaching footsteps. So much so that when a voice came from behind him he quite literally jumped and unfortunately the back of his head made contact with the hood of the car at which point he cursed up quite the storm. Honestly he could have made a whole swarm of sailors blush with the expletives escaping him in waves after waves.
“Uh, yeah, that’s me,” he managed through a grimace as his hand rubbed the back of his head. “Sorry, I wasn’t uh expecting anybody to be down here.”
Holly snorted, clearing her throat to hide the fact that she desperately wanted to laugh. “You okay?” she asked, moving a little closer now he’d climbed out of the engine. He even looked young, Gods Holly felt her age.
He was covered in grease, but that was hardly unexpected: he was their mechanic and from the looks of it he was eager. She knew he’d been in the Everglades facility for a while, and as an ex marine, she wondered why it was that he hadn’t wanted to try something more. Still, he was just starting in his career, to leave it so soon to join something else?
“Didn’t mean to startle you, Private.”
“Mmm, yeah,” he hummed as he continued to rub his hand through a completely dishevelled head of hair. “Always figured my hard head would come in handy for something one day.” Cue a disarming rather boyish grin which was quite literally nothing but teeth and dimples.
He plucked out a nearby cloth from where it was resting and used it to rub the worst of the grease off his hands before he offered one to Holly.
“Water under the bridge,” he assured her.
Holly shook his hand firmly, returning his smile with one of her own, granted hers was significantly less wide and boyish, but it was warm nonetheless. She’d appreciated the gesture of him wiping his hands clean but honestly she wasn’t all that bothered. Getting dirty was part of the job in one way or another.
“Holly Page,” she added, “Still, water under the bridge or not, that was an impressive clunk.”
She tilted her head to the side. “Normally there would be a bit more of a welcome wagon but it’s all a bit crazy here at the moment, we’re having transfers every week. I was technically coming down to do my weekly check to see if we’ve had a tank delivered yet.”
Looking around, Holly gave an exaggerated sigh and put her hands in the back pocket of her jeans. “Looks like I’m doomed to be disappointed again this week.”
“Nice to meet you,” Noah returned as it was nice to put a name to the face that he’d made a total ass out of himself in front of. “Yeah, sorry to say I definitely wouldn’t have let a tank escape my notice in spite of my recent oversight.” He stepped away from the truck he was working on to collect up a nearby clipboard that he proceeded to flip through. “Doesn’t look like it’ll be here for a couple days, but I can make a call and see if I can’t hurry it up.” He turned his gaze back to Holly. “You need it for anything urgent?”
Holly’s eyes literally lit up. “You mean there’s one due to arrive? I’ve been hoping for two years that one’ll just magically fall out of the sky and provide me with some tiny little semblance of privacy in this place.”
She leaned against a nearby vehicle and folded her arms. “You’ll be my new good luck charm if a tank actually arrives a little while after you did.”
“Two years?” Noah repeated, eyebrow lifted. “That’s a looooong time. I commend you on your patience. Don’t think I would have been able to hold out that long.” He put the clipboard back in place and turned back to the truck he’d been working on or rather the book that he needed to update with the repairs.
A chuckle escaped him. “No pressure, right?”
“Two years,” Holly repeated with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “I used to sit in one near our camp during my last tour when my unit were getting rowdy. There’s nothing like the peace and quiet you find sitting inside a tank. No one comes to bother you.”
To be fair, most of her unit had known that if she’d stormed off to the tank they needed to leave her alone otherwise they’d end up getting a fist to the face.
“What brings you to Limbo?”
“Yeah, tanks’ll do that,” Noah agreed with a smirk before he folded his arms across his chest, not at all bothered that in doing so he smudged car oil all over his t-shirt. Clothes could be washed, no big deal. “Me? Uh, just moving facilities. I was at the Everglades before, turns out this place needed a mechanic and somebody who could work with the small arms.”
He didn’t get into the particulars as to why he joined up with the Regiment, especially as that was his business and rather private business at that.
“What about you?”
Holly snorted, “Moved facilities a couple of years ago, breaking in a new team right now.” She tilted her head. “It’ll be good to have someone trustworthy working on our vehicles.”
She wasn’t particularly brilliant with people, she struggled to communicate well on a good day. She wondered if it was going as badly as she thought.
“Well after causing you to concuss yourself, I’ll leave you to it. Let me know if you want a tour. Limbo’s a good facility, far as these places go. Just wanted to welcome you.”
Noah nodded his head with a smile. “I’ll probably take you up on that tour.” He didn’t much like the idea of getting lost. “But it was nice to meet you, Holly. Look forward to seeing you around.” And with that he turned back to the truck he’d been working on.
His head hurt but it was worth it to have met somebody new.