(no subject)

[protect_and_survey]

Jemma Simmons is a tired researcher - there'd been an incident (of course there'd been, someone really needed to create a freshman class at the major universities titled 'There's Better Responses to Boredom and/or Depression than Creating a Supervirus') and the entirety of the biological sciences crew had gone into overdrive.

To make it through, she'd managed to go through an entire pot of the laboratory coffee.

She might be a tired researcher, but she'll be awake for the next few hours. Thus, she's re-organizing the entries in the notebook she wrote for Fitz, to make them more readable for Coulson.

Of course, she'll have to do them again when her handwriting is more legible, but that's a different problem.

Comments

[cutting_edgex23]

X approaches Simmons from the left. Carefully.

(She tries hard not to be quiet.)

"You are working?"

[protect_and_survey]

"Well. In a sense, I suppose - it's nothing entirely official." She replies, her babble a bit more disjointed than usual. "Hullo."

[cutting_edgex23]

"Oh."

X pauses, head tilting as she considers this.

Then --

"I can go. If it is problematic. Even if it is not official."

Beat.

"Hello."

[protect_and_survey]

"Oh no, you don't have to do that, I'm just re-writing notes, trying to... organize this all somehow, that'd make sense to someone... well. Not me."

That shouldn't be so hard, right? Hrm.

[cutting_edgex23]

"Oh."

X frowns, very slightly.

"I could help."

Beat.

"If that is acceptable."

[protect_and_survey]

Jemma pauses while she tries to remember if she wrote down anything about SHIELD, and then pulls out a sheaf of loose papers from between the pages.
"I'm just trying to alphabetize it first, then make categories from that... there really isn't a good model to follow."

[cutting_edgex23]

X takes the sheaf of papers, flicking a quick glance at the topmost before asking --

"You are alphabetizing by subject matter? Or something else."

It's better to check.

Just in case.

[hecu_marine]

Handwriting can be a heck of an issue. Shephard knows that feeling. It took him forever to get his handwriting good enough to let other people look at his notebooks.

Mind you, he's not looking at what she wrote. That's just plain bad manners. We're just saying.

"You all right there, ma'am?" says the fellow in HECU urban combat fatigues, with a face like he hasn't seen coffee in years.

[protect_and_survey]

"Oh, quite alright, thank you." She assures him, very clearly over-caffinated and over-tired. It's not a great look, but it's one that is very common in her division at the moment. "The waitrat should be by in a bit with fresh tea."

Chamomile, which isn't her preference, but it does have the benefit of not making the problem worse.

[hecu_marine]

"Fair 'nough," he says amiably. "You were lookin' a mite like I felt there, and I been studyin' long enough that I've about had it for the evening."

Or whatever the hell time of day it is. Not like he remembers any more.

[protect_and_survey]

"It has been... quite a day, but I won't be able to sleep for hours yet. The coffee made in my lab could be used to wake the dead." She explains. "Bar serves it, if you ask." In case he's hoping to have some of it.

[hecu_marine]

"Think she'd gimme some in a thermos?" says Shephard. "We ain't had proper coffee back home in a damn long time, just guarana. Ain't got nothin' against the stuff, but a man misses his java after he's been studyin' a few hours."

[protect_and_survey]

"I don't see why she shouldn't - it's hardly a state secret." She shrugs while flagging down one of the wait rats. "Yes, thank you, could you bring a thermos full of the FitzSimmons lab coffee?"

The rat squeaks and skitters, knowing better than to stay near the the bio-scientist for long.

[onceaviking]

"Good evening, Jemma."

Eric sounds friendly enough, but he looks a little worn.
And pale with red time eyes , just like last time.

"Burning the midnight oil?"

[protect_and_survey]

"Oh, hullo Eric." She smiles, looking up from her messy shorthand where she's trying to figure out if 'fireproof fish' go before or after 'possible exposure to Jesus Lions' in a training manual. "It's already well and truly burnt, I'm afraid, I'm just waiting for the caffeine to wear off."

[onceaviking]

He smiles.
"I'm not a coffee drinker," he says. "But I hear it's effective."

He nods at her notebook.
"Work or pleasure? Or both?"

[protect_and_survey]

"Oh, this is just a little side project." She smiles, tucking her pencil in the crease of her notebook. "There's the potential for people from my lab coming here, and it would be good to have a guide."

[onceaviking]

"That is very thoughtful of you," he says.
"It might prove useful just in general. Is that seat free?"

Pointing to the chair opposite her's.
"And just keep on with what you're doing. I just need a break."

That is even true. News just got in regarding the torched vampire nest in Bossier. He's just too busy to have to deal with that shit.

[protect_and_survey]

"Oh, it's all yours." She offers graciously, picking up her pencil again. "I take it your schedule hasn't gotten any better either."

[not_the_cavalry]

Melinda's much more comfortable this time in the bar -- picking up a whiskey (neat), and Nicholas Spark novel (Message in a Bottle).

Look, even she needs her days off.

She hesitates on her way to sit near the fire. "Doctor Simmons?"

How interesting. Already on her list of names, and now she's in Milliways.

[protect_and_survey]

There's a very brief, very distinct expression of 'oh shit, not again' when she looks up at the sound of her name in an unfamiliar voice. But the face that comes with that voice is vaguely familiar somehow. Someone she's seen at SciOps, or the Academy? There's just so many faces sometimes.

"Um... hello. Do I... know you? Sorry, it could be I should know this but it's been a very long day and I've had entirely too much coffee."

[not_the_cavalry]

The lift of Melinda's eyebrows is amused.

"Melinda May," she says. "I'm in administration. I helped you process your paperwork for funding toxin collection a couple months ago."

[protect_and_survey]

"Oh right! Good to see you again, ma'am." The study she remembers vividly, and now with the hint she remembers the agent as well - Jemma remembers her being terribly efficient, which was wonderful, after the mess and utter disastrous amounts of work left behind with Loki and the Chitauri.

"Oh! I should let you read this - um. Agent Coulson he... he used to come here, and the thought it'd be a good thing for other agents to see. I wrote it for Fitz, but..." She slides the book over, some of its pages covered in actual English, some in sketches and diagrams and equations (some with half of the values filled in with '?' and '???'), some degenerating into the multi-language shorthand used in the FitzSimmons labs.

[not_the_cavalry]

"I heard he still does," May says, taking a seat across from Simmons. "It seems most of our colleagues are here from before New York."

It stabs at her less, now that she knows he lives -- though in what state, who can say. It still hurts like a broken rib; aching every time she breathes. None of that shows, for someone who doesn't know her well.

"What am I looking at?" The sheet in front of her is multilingual short hand.

[protect_and_survey]

She doesn't say she wishes she could warn everyone who hasn't been through everything Loki did - that's both a given, and incredably stupid. They managed to survive against nearly impossible odds, and changing anything could change the outcome.

Still. She lost a lot of friends in New Mexico.

"Oh! Sorry, that's not translated yet, this page is better," She switches forward a few pages to a slightly rambling essay on the morphology of bar denizens that could be expected given that there appears to be a bit of selectivity - everyone so far has been able to breathe oxygen, and survive at human-normal temperatures. It's a bit rambly because somewhere halfway through she got distracted onto the topic of how Asgardians, who are from a world theoretically very similar to Earth, could be both so alike and so disparate.

She has some editing to do, still.

"When I first came here Fitz, my lab partner Leopold Fitz? He didn't, and Director Fury said that if someone hasn't come here, I couldn't talk to them about this place, and so..." She waves a hand at the book, stuffed full with loose papers that she'd scribbled notes down on when she hadn't had her book with her.