Participants:
| Scene Title | Early Out |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | A friendship in vignette, made possible by one's ability to keep warm no matter the weather. |
| Date | December 18, 2020 |
"Fuck, we're gonna miss the fucking ferry, fuck!"
Emily Epstein has been back in the SESA office all of a few days, kept largely to herself, and spoken little. She was called into Nicole Miller's office and accepted a temporary assignment to help with some of her administrative efforts, and disappeared off the floor shortly after. There was plenty to read, plenty to get caught up on.
Plenty of people to avoid.
Geneva Stevenson is not one of those people.
It's the Friday before Christmas, basically everyone was being sent home early in waves, but the unexpected release time for these two junior agents is making for a very tight window of time for them to leave Fort Jay and make it to the docks without having to wait another thirty minutes for the next ferry.
"Come on, Gene, hurry!" Emily yells more to the air than her fellow agent and friend, sprinting down steps and across concrete walkway with more confidence to her step than she has a right to. Her creme-colored peacoat goes billowing around her due to being unfastened, pinned to her body only by the bag she has across her body. Strands of long blonde bangs wisp around the side of her face while she runs, broken free of the bun her hair is bound back in.
A procession of nonstop cursing is trailing Emily up each twist and turn of the walkway, making Geneva's moving location abundantly clear at all times.
It's never far behind.
All things considered, this is probably a decent snapshot of their entire relationship. Had Emily not sought her out herself after her miraculous return, Gene would have swiftly done so of her own volition, any attempts at avoidance be damned. There was no way her good friend would have gotten away from her so easily.
Unlike this goddamn boat, apparently.
There is a moment when Gene goes completely blind thanks to her own long ponytail whipping across her eyes in a particularly wet gust of seaspray-heavy wind; her hair had grown a remarkable length in Emily’s absence. She paws the bulk of it away, and it just winds up in her mouth instead.
Fucking—
"—pthbb—fffuck! Wait for us, you rotten fuckheads—"
That would be towards the lurching, uncaring walls of the departing ferry.
With a groan, Emily comes plodding to a stop. Thankfully, the weather's warm enough the spray isn't half-as-likely to have formed ice, or she might be on her ass instead of shifting her weight back and forth heavily in whole rocks of steps. She really hadn't wanted to be stuck on the island for an extended period of time.
"Fuck," she breathes out into the air, the word clouding away from her as she looks up at the grey skies. Her arms come away from her sides and then plop back down.
"Well," Emily announces. "Want to take a fucking walk or something?" Nevermind she's winded, looking like she's better prepared to just sit for however long they need to wait for. She certainly doesn't want to go back in. Not… now. They'd just made their triumphant charge of an exit. She drops her head with a sigh and brushes her hair back from her face as she lifts her head back up.
If there were any person to get stuck outside for an extended period of time with, though, it was Geneva. Emily sidles up to her friend's side to link one arm around hers, shrugging after as she turns to her. "Sounds like the whole fucking island's our backyard for the next twenty five minutes."
There's an extraneously long, muffled grumble of complaint over from Geneva, who is rubbing the side of her face in a mittened hand even as Emily saunters up to take the opposite arm. "Doesn't look like we have a choice," she laments, though her voice isn't raised nearly enough to indicate real anger.
The next thing she does after letting that hand drop is to inhale heavily, clearly an attempt to calm herself down the rest of the way. It's fine. This is fine.
It's a fucking lovely day for a walk, and nobody can fucking tell them otherwise. "Yeah. I'm not so keen on going back in right now, so why the hell not?" she agrees, pointing ahead with her chin to indicate that she'll follow her friend's lead.
Emily rubs her hand along Geneva's bicep in a sign of gratefulness as much as encouragement for them to keep going ahead together. In all the things that've changed this year, she's glad Geneva's coming to work with SESA is one of them.
Keeping her friend in the corner of her eye, she gives her a small nudge. "You've gotta tell me all the good movies I missed out on this year," Emily insists. "And games! I was reading the other day about how far VR headsets have come, and I'm really thinking about saving up for one now, but I don't even know what new games I'd get to play on it…"