Participants:
| Scene Title | Not The First Week |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | FRONTLINE members hang out a little. |
| Date | Nov 23, 2010 |
Textile Factory 17, Red Hook
The morning has been abysmal. It's barely over the freezing mark outside, and Elisabeth feels like shit. Her nose is red, her throat is scratchy, her voice is hoarse, and she coughs every few minutes. Sitting at one of the tables in the rec area across from Gavyn, the women have — of all things — a Scrabble board set up between them. "No way!" Elisabeth is objecting. "You can't use brand names! ExLax does not count!" Especially not when it's on a friggin' triple word block! Her objection is being made in good-natured ways; the game's all in good fun.
Gavyn, sunglasses and all, is thankfully not fighting off a cold yet, but she is looking a bit on the tired side. Yet she still laughs at Elisabeth's outburst. "It's a perfectly fair word," she counters with a grin. "Rules only say you can't use proper nouns. Which ExLax isn't." Not exactly. Head tilting slightly, she cranes her neck to take another look at the board. "It's the stuff that makes you go."
JJ wanders into the rec room in search of the refrigerator; he's in sweats and a t-shirt, feet in gray socks, looking like he just rolled out of bed — which he did. He doesn't notice the women playing scrabble until he's grabbed a can of Monster and overhears the dispute.
He glances at the two, green eyes narrowing a touch as he comes to survey the game. "ExLax is a proper noun, it just isn't all that proper to talk about in polite company," he quips, perching on the sofa arm as he peers down at the game. "Mornin'."
It's nearly lunchtime, but Liz isn't one to give a crap today either. She's taking a recovery day. Or something. The cold she's suffering is way worse than it ought to be just for the fact that she blew out her ability on the day of the riots — along with her immune system, apparently. "Thank you!" Elisabeth replies to JJ's assertion. "See? That's two votes to one. You can't just tack ex onto there and get triple score for a proper name." She sticks her tongue out at Gavyn. For all that she's sick, she's also apparently enjoying the banter. "You wouldn't let me use Coke as short for cocaine cuz it was a proper name of a soda, so… off you go, woman!"
Gavyn, unaware of who JJ is, gives him a shushing look. You're not helping! But too late, Liz has already claimed victory over the dispute. "Fine," she sighs in exaggerated defeat. It was such a good word, too. Her tiles are taken back with a chuckle. Then, after a quick study, she gets a smug look and sticks a T down. "There! 'At'."
JJ chuckles. "Sorry, stuna shades," he says with a smirk, offering a hand to the sunglass-wearing woman.
"JJ Jones. I'm gonna guess you're Gavyn, from the briefing I got from our illustrious leader." He opens his Monster can with a crisp kshhh and lifts the can to take a few swallows. "So is this like the fire department, where we sit around and get fat while waiting for bad shit to happen? Have you seen some of those firemen? I don't know how they even get down the hole on that pole, their guts are bigger than…" he fails to come up with a proper simile. "They're really fat!"
Elisabeth was just taking a sip out of her mug of hot tea with honey when he says that, and she chokes on it. Now she's coughing not just because she's got a ridiculous cold but because just tried to inhale tea!! Dammit!
It takes several long seconds before, gasping, the blonde says, "Christ. You're tryin' to kill me the first full week on the job, JJ!"
Gavyn's nodding as she reaches out to accept the handshake. "That's me, Gavyn Mitchell. Good to meet you, JJ." She's about turned back to the board game, to await Elisabeth's counter to her wonderful, two-point word when the man continues. "Wait, what?" She starts laughing, the mental imagery of fat firemen and those poles. And it only worsens when Liz snarks at JJ.
A cross between mortification at making his boss choke and humor at enjoying her laughter crosses JJ's face. He pushes off the sofa arm to go retrieve her a paper towel, handing it to her with a little flourish.
"Pardon, Ma'am, I swear I wasn't trying to kill you," he says formally, looking contrite, before he cracks a grin. "Not on my first week, anyway."
Still coughing, Elisabeth reaches up and takes the towel, wiping up a little and laughing around the coughs. "Nicely done," she informs him. But no — today's just one of the few days that I'm telling you all to take the day off. Today and tomorrow. Unless you get called in, the days are yours to do with as you see fit. The holidays are generally not the best for law enforcement, and Thanksgiving and Black Friday incidents are somewhat notorious. So since we're backing them up I expect us to wind up working a pretty long weekend." She glances at them and smiles. "And don't go using your armor to cut in line on Black Friday," she adds facetiously.
"Yes, ma'am," Gavyn answers sagely. She was so looking forward to using armor for some of those sales, too. She pushes away from the table to find herself a drink, heading for the fridge. "Where you from, JJ," she asks before pulling out a cola.
"Black Friday?" JJ says, blinking for a moment. He is not a shopper, clearly. "Oh, oh, right, the … the thing you crazy people do after Thanksgiving, right?"
He turns to regard Gavyn. "Out west. Los Angeles," he says. "Just came in from San Diego. You?" he asks politely, resuming his perch on the end of the sofa and taking a sip of his Monster before glancing at the Scrabble game again. "What the hell does 'quim' mean?"
"I have no idea," Elisabeth retorts. "She gave me a cock-and-bull story, and since I don't have a dictionary, I can't argue with her. So she got it." She grins, though, apparently not caring. She does, however, move to add 'wom' to the 'bat' that is already on the board, garnering herself a double letter score for the w. "There!" she murmurs.
"What was that," Gavyn asks with a chuckle as she returns, eyeing Liz. "That's your word." Sheesh, blame the truth-finder, really. She sinks into her chair and looks at Elisabeth, giving a small nudge to her sunglasses.
"Why don't you tell JJ what that word means," Gavyn says slyly. She cracks open her cola, brows raising just above the rims of her shades.
The young man raises his brows and goes to stand behind Gavyn, peering down at her tiles curiously, then at the board, perhaps to see if he can help her out on the next play. This also allows him to watch Elisabeth. "What… I didn't think that was supposed to be a hard question. Am I … is this like a word that everyone knows, and now I look like an idiot for not knowing it?" he asks a little worriedly, brows creasing again. "Can I blame it on the LA Unified School system?"
Elisabeth grins cheerfully and repeats herself. "I haven't the foggiest notion. So far as I know it's a made-up word. But most games go to the person who has the best poker face, don't they?" she asks with a wink. Yes — she shamelessly cheated and blamed it on Gavyn.
"Really," Gavyn says, feigning exasperation. "Some people's kids." She shakes her head, tsking quietly. This just won't do. She leans back in her chair and tips her head downward to look at her tiles and those in play. Or does she?
A grin spreads as Gavyn gives over to impulse. "Whose word is that now," she asks, innocently enough. Her head remains tipped slightly, but she looks up at Liz over the rims of her glasses. Oh yes, she can cheat too.
JJ glances from Gavyn to Liz, and back — though his eyes are on the back of her head. He glances back at Liz curiously. "I'm so freakin' lost. I think it's pick on FNG day, right? Is this where I'm supposed to huff off and cry in my bunk that the cool kids won't let me play their reindeer games?" He looks sullen for a moment, then cracks another grin. "It's harder than that to piss me off."
Elisabeth laughs outright. "Mine, of course. But you let me get away with it." She coughs again and gestures for JJ to take a seat. "You're more than welcome to join in. It's Gavyn's turn, and we're both cheating madly," she freely admits. "But as long as everyone knows we're all cheating madly, it's fair."
Gavyn looks innocent enough when she glances up at JJ. Don't worry, she actually lifts her head to look at the man. "She's a terrible cheater," she explains in an aside. "Very sneaky, you might want to watch out for her." A finger further settles sunglasses onto her face and her can is placed near the edge of the table. Then, an S is added to the end of 'wombat' with an O and a P trailing off. Now it's Wombats one way and Sop off the S.
So that's how that works. JJ snickers a little and shakes his head, making sure not to look at Gavyn's eyes when she looks up. "Nah, I think you guys are too far in the game for me to join in. It'd just make it all the sadder when I whup your asses by 100 points or more when you had a huge headstart on me, right? I don't wanna make you guys hate me that much already," he says, moving back around to head to the refrigerator in search of a snack.
"Not on the first week, anyway."