JP Allen (hotbloodedone) wrote in commandhq, @ 2018-05-06 00:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | jp allen, p: lindsey, p: mena, raven pereria |
Who: JP Allen & Raven Pereria
What: Making plans
When: April 20th
Where: Common Rooms
Rating: PG
JP Allen was a lot of things. Organised was not one of those. Being good at relating to people his own age also wasn’t one of those things. Neither was training, or baking… In fact, the list of things he wasn’t good at far outweighed the list of things he was. But something that he knew how to do was come up with grand ideas that he had no way of executing. Hector’s library was one such idea.
As he wandered into the leisure area, having scoped it out beforehand to try and understand just where the perfect place for a library would be (and he decided actually, the shoppette would probably be better, or perhaps a small, sequestered part of one of the leisure rooms, so in fact he hadn’t made a decision at all, he was just fooling himself), he realised that despite having this grand idea, he didn’t know how to execute it.
Even if he did, it wasn’t something he could do alone.
Following Jester’s departure, too, they’d lost their contact with the outside world who could get them movies and TV shows on demand. They needed to come up with another form of communally sourced entertainment, and what better way for that than a library where everyone pitched in and just shared what they had? Almost everything else here was shared, so why not their books and media? It just made sense.
He stopped, eyes roving over the people in the leisure room until he saw the coincidentally raven haired wonder he was looking for. She was reading - par for the course - and while he was usually loathe to disturb someone who was reading she didn’t have that look of rapt fascination he had seen on her face before, so the book obviously wasn’t quite as interesting as some of the others he’d seen her reading before.
“Afternoon,” he greeted, falling down on the cushions beside her - but still a kind of respectable distance away so as not to invade her personal space. “How’re you?”
---
As soon as someone sunk into the cushions next to her, Raven lowered her book and gazed over the rim of her glasses. Seeing JP, she smiled, the expression somewhat tight-lipped and just the slightest bit tricksy – like she had a secret she was dying to share with him.
“Good, thank you,” she closed her book and tossed it down on the sofa between them, not bothering to mark her place. This was the last time she was ever going to read Burroughs.
Raven pointed her finger towards him and her grin deepened. “You look like you have something on your mind, though. And I have a feeling I’m going to be interested. Spill it, Allen. It’s been a long, boring day.”
Even if there wasn’t actually anything he had in mind, Raven was sure the two of them combined could fall into a fun conversation. He was one of her favourite people at this facility – other than Dove, of course.
---
“You can say that again,” JP agreed with a groan, rubbing his hand over his face and slumping into the cushions. He was curious by the puckish expression that crossed over Raven’s face though she often always looked as though she had a secret to share and every time he was helpless to resist his desire to ask her just what it was that she wanted to tell him. “Time is elongating. I’m beginning to theorise that we’re actually just on the edge of a black hole here, where seconds are stretched out into infinity.”
He chuckled and stretched his arms out across the back of the chair, crossing his leg over his thigh, ankle resting above his knee.
“You can tell me what crossed your mind when I turned up too, but yeah, I do have something on my mind.”
Huffing out a breath, he tipped his head back and looked at the ceiling.
“Figured we could actually try and make some headway with the library for Hector thing. Except now we don’t have Jester, it might end up being a library for everyone. You know, books, movies, tv…”
—-
“At least whenever we actually do get out of here, for whatever reason, the world will be an adventure to explore since it will have moved forward fifty years, compared to the five years we spent in here? Which will, of course, feel like five-hundred years.” She picked up a nearby pillow and hugged it against her stomach. “Something to look forward to.”
She turned slightly on the sofa so that she could face JP while he caught her up on his news. Her cheek pressed into the cushion and she looked quite content and comfortable.
The more he spoke, the more her dark eyes lit up. A project. “I think that’s a great idea!” She struck him gently with the pillow she’d been hugging. “I think that’s a lovely concept. We can use a part of the leisure room to construct it, or the shopette, and have different sections dedicated to different types of entertainment…,” her smile broadened.
“Yes, brilliant idea. Good plan. Have you spoken to any of the handlers about it? About organizing it and getting it started? Maybe that new supply-lady can help us get the materials we’d need?”
---
“Not yet,” JP said with a chuckle, pleased to see the sudden enthusiasm that crossed Raven’s face. Being stuck here was soul-destroying. He still hadn’t worked out why Noah had voluntarily signed up to work here, knowing what he did - that JP had been taken and ended up somewhere. He cleared his throat to derail that train of thought before he rubbed his hand through his hair. “Figured I’d talk to you first, since we’d be doing it together. I’m not gonna try and figure out the logistics of it alone.”
He wet his lower lip. “Figure we can get Noah to help us build stuff. Or that new person- Gabi something? And that Steph person can help us, too, by ordering things in. We can probably do like a request for the new releases between set dates each month?”
---
“I could bring it up with Holly? She’s a helpful sort. And you’re probably still trying to get a feel for the new guy. How’s that going, by the way?” Raven knew there was no love lost with JP’s former Handler – she hoped the new one was doing a better job.
“Hmm, Noah, hmm? He’s a cutie,” Raven held the pillow back against her stomach and mimicked a dreamy expression. “Hopefully he or Gabi would be willing to help. I don’t see why not, thought. Probably a little more fun to do something outside of the day-in, day-out.”
Raven pursed her lips and crinkled her nose. “Do you really think they’d spend money on getting that kind of stuff in so timely, though? I guess we’d have to ask that woman, first.”
---
“Uh, Russell? He seems okay. He’s not a psycho which always helps. Told me straight out that my bedroom is off limits to him which shoulda kind of been obvious but after the whole bullshit with Marshall…” He trailed off, unable to remember if he’d actually given anyone but Cal the details of what had happened. He thought not, but he’d fill Raven in if she asked. “Anyway, he’s got a training rota that doesn’t vary wildly between early morning and evening so it works for me. He seems nice?”
JP couldn’t help rolling his eyes a little when Raven teasingly commented about Noah being attractive, as if he didn’t already know that. He was ninety percent sure that Noah had been part of his gay sexual awakening - though he had never told a living soul that and never would. It was his secret, his weird creepy burden to carry. Besides, the guy was his best friend. Or… so he thought. He didn’t actually know where they stood anymore, it had been hard to do much since he’d arrived.
“Maybe we can rope them both into helping us out,” he suggested, “Noah and Gabi, I mean. They’d get something fun to do and we’d not have to do any of the heavy lifting as far as we could avoid it.” He grinned and then shrugged. “Jackson did it for us with their bandwidth, pretty sure ordering movies in isn’t gonna kill their black ops budget. And if it helps sedate the masses…”
He raised a shoulder and flexed his fingers; JP was a really tactile person but he knew that Raven wasn’t, so much. So he respected that, hard as it might have been for him. She was the kind of friend he’d greet with a kiss the top of the head and a one-armed hug.
“I can ask Russell, you can ask Holly and then together they can get on with getting us the green light, maybe?”
---
One of Raven’s brows shot up high. “You never did tell me the whole story about that,” she nudged his foot with her own. “The whole bedroom fiasco. What happened with that jerk?” Because some grown ass man who didn’t understand boundaries of privacy? Definitely a jerk.
“What?” She laughed when he rolled his eyes at her. “You can’t tell me you don’t think so. Anyone can see it.”
Reaching across to the table, Raven picked up her mug of tea and nodded when JP mentioned how they could get both Gabi and Noah to assist them with building their media library. “Yes please,” she agreed. “I’m not much for lifting heavy objects. I’m more of a points-and-orders-people-around type of assistant.”
She smirked over the mug, still steaming, and nodded. “I can’t imagine Holly wouldn’t be interested in helping us get the greenlight. She’s very lovely, and seems to want us to have the best we can get out of this place…,” she leaned in slightly, her conspirator mannerisms escalating as a result, “She’s apparently going to see if we can’t have access to some higher education while we’re stuck in here.”
---
“He came into my room while I was sleeping, played some bugle music, sprayed me with water and turfed me outta bed by lifting my mattress.” JP said with a scowl. The table nearby wobbled a little, wood creaking. “Ended up breaking all the shit in my room, Cal pulled the water outta my clothes but the rest of my stuff was ruined. All this was at like, 6am too. Fucked up shit.”
He scrubbed his hand over his face when she didn’t let the Noah thing drop and he just lifted a shoulder. “Yeah, I guess? He was always pretty popular with the girls at high school.” He was beginning to realise that he was hugely private; his conversations with Noah on the board had all been privated, they’d hardly hung out with each other and definitely not where anyone else could see and he didn’t think he’d spoken with anyone save Julian, who had got the information out of him when he was sleepy and high so it didn’t count, about his extensive history with Noah. “To be fair, the guy’s always been pretty popular. Something about being just like an overgrown labrador.” He couldn’t help the way his lips curled up a little in an affectionate smile before he cleared his throat and caught it.
“You and I can have clipboards. Project managers and all that. Ask other people to do the heavy lifting. I can create cranes and stuff.”
JP’s eyebrows raised as she leaned forward. “Really? College? I heard she’s kind of a hard-ass, though. Is that all just rumour?”
---
Raven’s eyes slowly got wider, and her jaw slowly dropped as JP explained what had occurred between him and Marshall when the handler burst into his room. She was suddenly very concerned that Dove had ever been a part of Marshall’s team, even though she hadn’t heard anything so awful from her friend. In fact, most of Dove’s feedback on Marshall had been positive. Why had he been such an asshole to JP, then?
She shook her head. “I hope they fired him, and that’s why he’s gone,” Raven blew across the warm tea. “A guy like that has no place being in charge of anyone or their well-being.”
She smirked when she noticed his slight frustration at not dropping the conversation about Noah. Seemed like JP was rather protective of his friendship. “Probably not just with the girls,” she reasoned. Raven went quiet for a moment, and let JP reflect on how his friend had always been the popular sort, probably due to his friendliness. By watching JP carefully, Raven noticed that small smile that he quickly tried to erase and swallow.
But Raven had seen it, and she wouldn’t forget it.
“Ooh, thank you,” Raven set aside her tea and clapped her gloved-hands together. “I’m sure they will all be sick of me very quickly, but it will mean that everything is done exactly as we planned it.”
She smiled wider and nodded. “Yeah! Great, right? She’s a tough trainer, no doubt about it; but on a personal level she’s very easy to talk to. I quite like her, I just wouldn’t want to be on her bad side.”
---
“He’s a nice guy,” JP said after a moment, frowning a little at the fact that they were still talking about Noah. Honestly he could wax lyrical about the guy but he needed to understand what he was doing here first. Whether he’d drunk the kool-aid or if the world was just crap that it would land him in the same place as the one person he’d been thinking about for years. “He was always popular with everyone.” It was a small wonder that he’d never just abandoned JP, but he hadn’t. They’d stuck together, even as Noah soared to popularity.
He rolled his eyes, “I think I’ll end up whacking you over the head with the clipboard before we’re done I’m sure,” he told her affectionately teasing, “but it’ll be good. Hector’ll love it and then everyone else can use it too. Maybe we can get an agreement that if someone breaks anything then it comes outta their salary might make people be more careful with things that aren’t theirs.”
Holly sounded alright. The jury was still out on Handler Davies, but at least he respected personal space, boundaries and didn’t fuck around with JP’s already messed up sleep schedule. That was something, at least. “Kinda get that feeling for a lot of the handlers here. Don’t wanna end up on their bad side. Guess it doesn’t help that they control the thing that fritzes out our brains if we do something they don’t like. Good people seemingly or not they still signed up to work for the overlords that run this place.”
---
“As long as you give me the clipboard back, we won’t have a problem,” Raven smirked.
But Raven was invested in JP’s idea. He was right; Hector would love it, and she was quite engaged in the idea of doing something kind of the man who had been so sweet to her and JP. He’d had no reason to be as welcoming to them as he’d been, and Raven appreciated it immensely. She couldn’t imagine being at this place without Dove, but she would have withdrawn even more if Hector hadn’t been here, either.
“The punishment system. Aye, good call. Especially with everyone getting cabin fever? God forbid they started throwing things around. Or ear-marking pages in books. I hate that.”
Good people or not they still signed up to work for the overlords that run this place.
Raven frowned. While she tended to lean towards the cynical side of things too, she wasn’t quite sure she shared his outlook. “Think of who they could have hired. There are so many people who hate us, who would…,” she bit the inside of her cheek. “I’m not saying that treating us humanely is worthy of an award or anything. I just—it’s better. So much better than it could have been.”
---
JP grimaced. “I’d hate to get a book that was mine back that had been screwed up by earmarking.” He lifted a shoulder, “I mean, it’s just polite to use a bookmark. Pretty sure we could get those, too. Bookmarks for every book or something.” He pulled a face as if he was making a mental note.
He was going to have said something else, but then Raven frowned. He knew that his opinions weren’t always the most vanilla, and even though he did his best to temper them sometimes he opened his mouth and his parents came out.
“Pretty sure if there were any truly gross human rights abuses going on here - more than there already are - it’d be shut down anyway. Agents who’ve been tortured and coerced by force into doing something aren’t gonna be effective in the field. Still you gotta wonder, those who don’t have a super in their family… why they’d sign up for something like this.”
It wasn’t that he saw the worst in people, but his parents’ influence had been heavier than even he’d thought. It made him think of Noah, and why Noah would have joined… It was a mystery.
“If there were more like Marshall here, I’m pretty sure someone would snap.”
---
Raven felt a shiver go through her entire body. “I wish I had a better retort to that,” she sighed. “But more and more, I wonder that, too.”
She folded her covered hands together and picked at the nail through the fabric of her gloves. “I thought being here would make me stronger, but sometimes I think I’m regressing. You ever feel like you’re just going backwards?” Raven bit the inside of her cheek. It wasn’t like that for everyone. Dove was, at last, thriving; with the help of people like Mason, and now with Holly as a handler, she was going to excel, like she always did, and Raven would be proud. But for the first time since they met, their paths didn’t seem to be moving in a parallel direction, nor were they crossing or converging.
Grateful for the moment of levity, Raven giggled under her breath. “Handlers waking everyone up and storming into their rooms? So many private moments interrupted… there would be a serious uprising.”
Raven reached over and patted JP’s hand. “I am glad, though, that you’re not dealing with that anymore. I’d hate to have to put in some phone calls to get someone to send me my old Baseball Bat of Justice.”
---
“Sometimes,” JP admitted. “There’s a part of me that feels being here’s a backslide.” He rubbed his hand through his hair and leaned into the cushions, “Plus there’s one part of my power that I still can’t access without giving myself a seizure, so y’know…”
He offered her a small smile, but it was tinged with concern. “You know… if you ever wanna talk all you gotta do is ask. I’m here to listen and stuff.” He lifted a shoulder. “I know I’m not a girl, or your vodka-and-chocolates buddy, but I’ve been here a while and done my fair share of motivational speeches. Pretty sure I can find one that’s not all doom and gloom.”
Catching Raven’s fingers when she patted his hand he just gave her a grateful grin and repeated, “I mean it. I got a bat of justice, too,” he pointed out, other hand outstretched. His whole body seemed to light up, pulsing with light as an pale yellow-white baseball bat appeared in his hand with the words JUSTICE written on the side in cursrive. He flipped it over, and on the otherside it read HELPFUL STUFF.
“Multifunctional.”
---
Plus there’s one part of my power that I still can’t access without giving myself a seizure, so y’know…
Raven couldn’t quite mask the genuine concern she felt for JP in that moment. It was a moment of intense relatability. That moment melted into something that warmed her, as JP explained that he was there for her, with all types of motivational speeches in tow, if she needed him. Her somewhat mischievous smile became something much sweeter. “Thanks, JP. You’re much too sweet for your own good, you know.”
She watched, amused and amazed, as JP began to light up his entire body, right there on the sofa. He constructed a gleaming baseball bat with justice inscribed into the side, an image which caused her to begin laughing warmly and loudly, throwing her head back in amusement.
When she finished laughing, Raven shook her head. She kissed the tips of her index and middle finger, and then pressed both fingertips against his cheek. “JP, you might very well be the light of my life. Pun absolutely intended."