James 'Glitch' Murray (a_gambling_man) wrote in rrinitiative, @ 2013-03-14 20:48:00 |
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Entry tags: | day thirteen, jim, jim and reggie, reggie |
Ready to patrol
Characters: Reggie and Jim
Setting: En route between the blocks, just before 5am
Considering it was just coming up to five in the morning, it could be argued that Jim had an unreasonable amount of spring in his step as he made his way up to Reggie’s room, a cup of coffee in each hand, humming to himself as he went. Of course the fact he had yet to go to bed might have partially explained the amount of energy still thrumming through his system if he hadn’t been naturally hardwired that way, his newest project inspired by the conversations he’d had with Mazie and Rusty keeping him more than occupied until the alarm he’d set on his computer reminded him to head in search of his patrol partner. Really it was a stroke of luck being assigned to work with Reggie, the two of them having met down in the laundry room where they’d quickly established an easy rapport as Jim had helped him work on the washers and it hadn’t taken long for the Brit to cement himself as someone he wanted to spend more time with.
Of course he hadn’t envisaged that time being the two of them playing nights watchman but Jim was happy to roll with it, arriving outside Reggie’s door and rapping his knuckles against it as a grin hovered at his lips. “Rise and shine Cool Britannia,” he said, leaning up against the door frame, coffee held up so it would be at eye level when the door opened.
Reggie had woken up just a little bit before Jim showed up to his door. He had volunteered for the patrol, and he'd had to get up for a patrol at five. Ugh, he kind of wanted to forget that a five in the morning existed. Sure, he'd still been UP plenty of times that late before, but getting up for then was just unfair. Maybe he should have stayed up late as well? He'd remember that for next time.
He had just finished up washing his face and brushing his teeth when he heard Jim at his door. Laughing, he walked over and opened up the door. "Kind of like that name," he admitted. "And please tell me that coffee is for me, or else we're gonna have to make a pit stop first." He looked awake, but his hair was still sticking up like he hadn't bothered to brush it after sleeping.
"It is indeed my friend," Jim replied, smile widening a touch as he handed over the mug. "I mean, I totally own your soul now for getting it for you but I figure it's a small price to pay for the caffeinated ambrosia of the gods that is a steaming cup of java, am I right?"
Reggie chuckled, taking the cup of coffee and taking a sip of it. "Oh yeah, my soul is definitely worth getting this," he admitted. If he didn't have this, he was likely going to pass out while walking along the block. "So, you ready to get this started?"
Smirking a little, Jim raised his mug in a vague kind of toast. "Glad you agree, I'll add it to my collection," he quipped before taking a gulp of his own coffee and stepping back from the door. "And I'm ready when you are sir." And it looked like it was going to be a good morning for it, with the skies clear and the temperature already pleasant despite the sun barely being up.
"So, you got a lot of souls in your collection, or am I one of the proud and few?" Reggie asked, taking a sip of his coffee as well. At least it was looking like a nice day. He certainly had that going for him with this patrol thing. This was one of his ways of helping out around the prison a bit more, at least in his mind. He didn't want people to think that he was slacking off. "Let's get this thing going then." Shutting up his door behind him, he was ready to head out.
"Oh it's a very exclusive group, I'm all about quality over quantity," Jim quipped, pushing himself off the way and making a move towards the elevator. "So your soul will be in excellent company I assure you."
Reggie laughed. "Definitely good to know," he said as he followed Jim toward the elevator. "I wouldn't want my soul to get lonely or anything like that, you know? I think my soul has ADD. It would get distracted and get into trouble very quickly if it wasn't occupied."
"Yours and mine both buddy, really you've got to pity whoever it is who keeps tabs on the afterlife with incorporeal folks like us running around wherever they go." Pausing briefly to take another swig of his coffee, he carried on. "I mean that's assuming my soul gets as bored as quickly as I do as opposed to just sitting somewhere all serene like for the rest of eternity. Personally I hope I can go haunt CalTech if I don't get reincarnated, be a literal ghost in the machine and freak out all the baby engineers..."
"I'm sure that part of the afterlife includes people that basically have to babysit people like you and me who can't really be trusted to be on our own for much," Reggie joked. "I know I'm not too much on being all serene. I would figure that would get boring pretty fast unless they did some massive brain washing on me." Was it odd that Reggie actually liked his life here? Probably. This was the closest to truly happy he could ever remember being, anyway. Still, he'd never call himself 'serene.' "That sounds like fun, actually. I think I'd rather haunt a sorority house, though," he joked.
Arriving at the elevator, Jim hit the call button, glancing back at Reggie with a grin. "Well my heart goes out to whichever poor schmuck winds up babysitting me for eternity," he said, chuckling. The way his mom talked about it, he had been a terror to babysit as a kid and given that his more difficult qualities had only got more pronounced with age...well needless to say, he had kept the guards at his last prison on their toes.
The chuckling turned into full blown laughter at Reggie's sorority comment and he shook his head a little. "My friend, have you ever actually been around sorority girls? Sure the view's great if that's your thing but the inane shit they talk about? Seriously, if I was stuck around that I'd probably try and figure out a way to commit ghost suicide."
Reggie had been one that had always gotten distracted by anything shiny as a kid, too. Of course, it could have just been that his father, after his mother died, didn't know how to relate to him. His father had always desired a more serious child, and Reggie just wasn't it. "I wonder if there's a time out in the after life that people like you and me will be sent to," he mused, grinning.
He laughed back at Jim's complaint that sorority chicks talked about stupid things. "The fun thing? I don't have to talk back to them. Hell, if there's enough of them around, there's always someone else to go look at when one of them starts talking too much about something stupid." He wasn't sure if he really wanted to haunt a sorority, but it was a funny idea, at least.
"You should be careful my friend," Jim said as the elevator chimed and the doors slid open. "Otherwise you're gonna wind up labeled as a dirty old man. Not that I'm judging you of course."
Reggie snorted. "I hate to be the one to tell you, but I kind of AM a dirty old man," he pointed out to Jim. "I figure as long as I accept what I am, then I'm good." He grinned. "Plus, I'm not THAT old." Forty was the new thirty, wasn't it?
"Hey if that's a label you're willing to walk round with, more power to you." Jim grinned. "Though for the record, I'm not calling you old, be kind of hypocritical if I did and despite my multitude of glaring personality flaws, being a hypocrite isn't one of them."
"I've been called a lot worse in my life," Reggie said with a shrug. He'd been called a WHOLE lot worse by his own sister and father, actually, but he didn't mention that. "Yeah, I try to not be hypocritical, either." Damn he hated that label.
Leaning against the wall as the elevator made it’s way to the basement, Jim bobbed his head in understanding and drained the last of his coffee. “So what you’d get up to after we quit down in the laundry room?”
Reggie took another sip of his own coffee. He didn't have much left of it, either. "Ended up meeting a girl who wants to be the engineer of this place. She has an idea to create some sort of alarm system, which we actually kind of need." Might prevent some things like that girl falling off the roof if an alarm had went off when someone had gotten on it.
Jim had actually read the journal post from the wannabe engineer and really he'd had every intention of replying to it but, as was so often the way with him, he'd got distracted by something else before he'd had a chance to. The fact Reggie had now met set engineer, who was apparently female to boot, brought the full force of his attention back to the matter, his eyes going wide. "Oh my god, yeah. Ru right? So hadn't guessed from her journal post that she was a she which is totally my bad. Lisa would totally kick my ass for making that kind of assumption. What's her idea for the alarms?" And where could he find her because he was so up for getting on board with another technology aficionado.
"Yeah, it's Ru," he said, laughing when Jim admitted that he hadn't realized what gender Ru had been by her post. Yeah, he could easily see that. She seemed nice enough, but he didn't exactly get too much 'feminine' from her. "We didn't get to talk about the alarms too much. I know we need them, though." The rooms obviously needed better locks on the doors as well, if any lunatic could get into them and hurt someone like they had done. It boiled his blood just to think about it too much, and he didn't like feeling like that at all.
Reggie's change in demeanour prompted one similar in Jim, the easy grin he'd been wearing replaced by something more sombre. "You won't hear any argument from me on that score," he said shaking his head. "Place like this, the talk about it being better than prison but if people ain't even safe in their beds..." Yeah, he definitely needed to chip in on any effort being made to increase security. "Still, this is something right?" He indicated to the two of them. "Patrols, people making the effort to look out for each other."
Reggie hadn't meant to have a change in demeanor, but thinking about what happened to that girl just upset him greatly. They were supposed to be in here to improve themselves and get an early release, right? Then why were you running around working on your basest of impulses? If that's what they were going to do, Reggie might as well drink up the entire bar then. Ugh. "Patrols are definitely a good start," he admitted with a nod. "We gotta do whatever we can to make this place a little safer for all of us."
“Exactly that,” Jim replied, Reggie’s statement setting his mind turning towards Mazie and her plans for the cameras. “We’ve all got our part to play, even if it’s stuff as simple as this.” Or as complicated as hacking into the security feeds his brain chipped in, a sentiment he mercifully managed to keep to himself. Sure he liked Reggie but he had been sworn to secrecy after all.
"Hey, even the simple stuff works when you do it," Reggie told him. That was his opinion, anyway. He knew that every little bit that any of them could do right now would help out a lot. His personal skill set of breaking into cars wasn't exactly useful here, but there were other things that he could do that might come in handy if the time came up for them.
Smiling again, albeit not as manically as he had been before, Jim nodded. “Good point well made my friend,” he said. “Apathy could make this place come apart just as fast as anything else so it’s cheering to know that people are willing to make the effort, feels like the beginning of something.”
"Hopefully these patrols are the beginning of people feeling safe here," Reggie said. He knew that this place could be pulled apart fast if people didn't feel like they could sleep at night without keeping an eye open, so them making this place safer was definitely the way to go.