I'm fine

[Charles Carmichael] Oh oh, it's magic . . .

Chuck is very, very good with computers. He can get them to do just about anything, really, if he puts his mind and time to it, which he's decided to do now, today. He's a bit old, perhaps, though could easily enough pass as one of the grad students who's in and out of the lab . . . if not for the fact that no one knows him. He doesn't wander aimlessly, goes straight to Emily's department and there - well, there he hits a stumbling block. Because even with his skills, he'd had trouble pinning her down to an exact desk.

"Emily Littleton?" It's asked of some other student, who no doubt indicates the way with a point, or a jutted chin.

[Emily Littleton] "Little?" the other student asks, looking up with that half-bleary mid-term look that people edging toward exams and due dates develop. "Yeah, she's in..."

The kid looks over with confusion at the RFID defended door that is, for once, actually shut. They wander over, badge in and push the door open for Chuck. Awesome security.

"Hang a left. Can't miss her desk, but she's probably out in the lab." A little pause, then a grin. "I heard her yellin' earlier. So, um, play nice?"

And with that, they wander off, leaving Chuck (who clearly belongs here) to fend for himself with Emily's temper (short) and the labmates (absent).

But the student is wrong, and Emily can be found at her desk, in a cube decorated with pictures from around the world and a hand-drawn nameplate (with an Asian signature in the bottom right corner) decorated in Autumnal colors. She has her headphones in and a massive excel sheet open.

Data analysis. Bane of her existence. Number crunching. But at least it was quiet, rational work.

Next to her, on the table, is a horribly, horribly scorched PCB. Likely what she was yelling about earlier.

[Charles Carmichael] She's crunching numbers, quiet, has her headphones on, and Chuck slips up behind her to tap on the shoulder. There's nothing he can do about the potential reflection in her monitor, but she certainly has no clue before that appears, or before there's a hand. And then, between the two of them, there's a video game held up - the latest Resident Evil, just out.

It's a peace offering, perhaps, to make up for possibly startling her.

He doesn't speak until the headphones are at least adjusted, off of one ear, and then, "I know it's Friday night and all. But you up for a game?"

[Emily Littleton] And startle her Chuck does. Emily, who is usually quite cool under pressure, has had the shortest fuse all day. For the last two days. Ever since dropping Enid off at Ashley's, she's been tightly wound, short-fused and ... hey, maybe she's channeling Riley!

The little Orphan jumps at the hand on her shoulder. Her back straightens and she immediately pulls forward in her chair and cranes her neck so she can look over her shoulder. Even before the game comes into view, before her brain processes that this campus (safe) and that is Chuck (friend), Emily's saying: Don't...

Then she pauses, and the alarm in her expression fades, and a smile slowly worms its way in instead. She reaches up with her left hand to tug the leads of her earbuds, pulling them out of her ear and away.

"Oh, hey," she says, all smiles-and-covering-something. "How'd you find the lab?" (Nice to see you, too.)

[Charles Carmichael] "I'm just that good," he says, grins, though his eye are more serious than the upturn of his lips would indcate - that she's covering something, he can see, even if he doesn't know what. "Everything alright?"

He's in jeans and a ribbed, rusty-red turtleneck sweater thing, and his curls are in an endearing tousle. The Chucks on his feet are a shade of orange that roughly matches the orange on his Geek Squad car. One thing can be said for the boy - he certainly likes his quirky shoes.

"Is everything alright?" He knows it's not, so the question is followed by, "If it's something I can help with, I will."

[Emily Littleton] Emily looked from him, down to the decimated and somewhat-crispy bread board, and then back up her fellow geek, whose Masters-in-anything-related would let him guess at exactly how much time and money was represented by the charred remains on her desk. She'd said not long ago that she was trying for a grad program app... it wasn't too far of a leap to guess that the mishap here just might have --

"Rough day," she said, a little ruefully. Emily is wearing a deeply plum-colored long-sleeve tee. Her hair is bound back in a neat spiral at the base of her neck. She's wearing jeans, again, and her feet are obscured by a pair of tennies (good for grounded, decent for running). "Rough couple of days," she ammended.

The tightness in her smile said not here, not now. But there was no one around to overhear them, and bugging academic labs was so not on the list of things to do for busy enemies.

"And it's bringing up old shite that I can't quite deal with," she added, because Chuck's eyes said he wasn't going to leave it at nothing and she wasn't sure how to explain the rest away. "Resident Evil?" A quirked eyebrow and a shifted discussion topic to the proferred game.

[Charles Carmichael] "Zombies and shooting things," he says, handing over the game. "Pretty great graphics. They made a crappy couple movies based on it a few years ago." Once she has the game in hand, and then looks closer at the board in attempt to pick up what the intent for it was - it's quite possible he can help, if that's the cause of her mood.

Have sonic screwdriver, will travel, indeed. "Old shite?" He doesn't press, though, just adds, "I told you, if you need to talk, you can. I'm a good listener." And she'd given the look that says not here, not now. The offer stands.

[Emily Littleton] Emily turns the game over in her hands a couple times. She's standing up, now. Not okay with Chuck standing behind her shoulder, with her in the chair. She stands up, turns to lean against her desk. It puts them on more evening footing, which helps, somewhat.

"Yeah. I kinda fucked something up as a teenager," she says, and Chuck's not really used to hearing her swear. It sounds out of place. Even getting trounced at fragfest, Emily had far more interesting epithets to throw out than standard curses. "But I was 16, and it was a while ago now." She shrugs, leaves it at that. "A friend of mine... well, she's not talking about it, but I think she's going through something similar. Maybe worse. It's hard to see, without remembering."

[Charles Carmichael] "If there's anything I can do, I hope you'll let me know," he says, letting a hand come to brush her shoulder briefly - it's not difficult to see that a hug might not be the best of
ideas. Or maybe it would, were they somewhere not here. So it's a little bit of touch, a little bit of comfort offered.

This has the plus side of having distracted him (mostly) from the board.

"Is your friend gonna be alright, do you think?"

[Emily] She can see his hand coming, and so the touch is taken for what it is -- comforting, affectionate. Emily doesn't tense this time, or jump out of her skin. But the expression she wears trends toward something grave, deeply worried. This is not some childhood prank, or some little fuck-up. Emily (and by extension her friend) must have gotten mixed up in things that were quite awful indeed.

"Honestly? I don't know." She chewed on her lip a little. "Enid's stronger than I was; I'm pretty sure of that. Even so..." she shook her head a little. "It's going to take awhile."

There's a visible shift in her as Emily fights to put this aside, to shove the memories and worries back into their neat little box. She's very. very good at hiding this, though, and Chuck can watch the gravity of it recede in her stance and expression. It's almost eerie.


[Charles Carmichael] Chuck watches it, curious, studying - it's a new protocol, something he hasn't seen (in her) before. One can almost see him trying to piece together the code and documentation that makes things work the way they do, are. And still, he doesn't push it - when, if she's ready, she'll come to him. Or someone. Or so he hopes.

"You aren't going to be able to do that all the time, you know. And it's not really good for you to keep trying, I don't think - but that's all I'm going to say. You know how to get a hold of me if you want to talk."

But he's here, now, and this is different. Given that, there's something else he can do, and so he does. He is tall, not skinny but not overly muscular either - he's larger than her, and save. He steps forward, takes her hand and pulls her to meet him so he can wrap his arms around her. No kiss, nothing like that, but quiet support and friendship offered, given freely.

"I'm sure you'll both be fine," he says after a bit, his chin resting on her head and hand stroking over her hair but not undoing the loose bun at the nape of her neck.

[Emily Littleton] Without a significant push, Emily would never be ready to go to anyone with this. There was tension in her frame when he enveloped her in a hug, and it kept her breath taut and short within her chest, her arms rigid at her sides. Only after he rested his chin on her head did Emily give in (acquiesce) and wrap her arms around him awkwardly. At a loss for what to do, she patted his back -- like the guy-hug-thump thing she'd seen other gamers do. (It could work.)

"I am fine," she contested, a little perturbed (methinks the lady protesth too much). And exhale. "But thanks."

He could feel it, though, the tension singing in every lineament and sinew. How she felt trapped, in something as freely offered and welcome as a hug. Emily needed to (run) pace, to fidgit, to bury her over-active mind in something while she fought to keep her body calm.

"You want to see the lab?" she asked, in an obvious feint to change the subject. "Since you're here and all..."

No, this would not come out freely. Not for him, and not likely for any other. She'd been holding tight to it for too long, now.

[Charles Carmichael] I am fine, she says, and he will need to push . . . but doesn't. They haven't known each other long, after all, and that sort of pushing into deep, personal issues seldom leads to the continuation of perfectly good . . . friendships, or whatever becomes of evenings spent gaming and eating traditional Chinese New Year's food. She is also uncomfortable, and so after a moment, he lets her go.

"Yeah, show me," he says. "And when we get back here, I'll see if I can't help you with your board. And I think, if you do come over for a while, it'll be Lego Star Wars, or something similar."

[Emily Littleton] Chuck lets her go, and he doesn't push. He doesn't pick at the thing that is making her irritable. He also hasn't ignored it. Emily, who is not okay (but says she is fine), smiles a bit more genuinely.

"The board's beyond help," she said, somewhat sadly. Em wrinkled her nose at it and shook her head a bit. "Grad student plugged the leads in backwards. Blew half the components. I'm rebuilding it ... later."

She should have been peeved, but Emily was resigned to it instead. She'd already snapped at the grad student (never mind that she was an undergrad), and the rest of the group had retired to the pub for their usual Friday afternoon outing. Without Emily.

She pushed away from her desk, and Emily's hand just barely touched his as she started out into the lab. She showed him her workstation (impeccably neat, ordered, clean, with her current revision schematic pinned to the wall [and precisely level]) and some of the projects the automation group was working on. They had an opportunity to pore over the academic posters hanging on the rear wall... it was a fairly awesome place, so long as you liked computers, components, math, physics and blinking LEDs.

Talking about these things seemed to relax her. Moving seemed to help, too. By the time they came to a stop again, Emily was almost playful with him. She stood close enough to incidentally bump him with her hip, and grin up at him when she asked: "So, what say you, Chuck of Best Buy?"

[Charles Carmichael] "I say . . . when do I get to come back and play?" That's with a grin as she bumps him lightly, and he loosely wraps an arm around her just momentarily, glad to see she's feeling a little better. "I also say they need better security protocols on their rigs. Though . . ."

He muses, momentarily. "Maybe just yours. Probably just yours."

And Chuck, of course, does like computers, components, math, physics and blinking LEDs. Very much so. Here, he's a kid in a candy shop, pleased with everything - or, well, almost everything. Nothing's perfect, after all - it's why there's so much to progress. "Are you sure I'm not allowed to hack it, just a little?"

[Emily Littleton] She laughed a little. It wasn't resonant but it was warm(er), somewhat. "You had no trouble getting in today; what is with this 'get'?"

Her mouth twisted wryly, amused. "And since when is there such a thing as a little hacking? It's not really a quantitative endeavour." They were near enough to her desk again for him to peek over at her screen, start assessing the security protocols (if any) she was running. Emily leaned into the half-embrace a little. This was easier than being pinned in a hug. This she could handle.

[Charles Carmichael] "Well, I wouldn't want to invade your space all unwanted, uninvited - that would hardly be fair. I could, sure, but it wouldn't be very good for trust levels, would it?" He shrugs. This is why he doesn't push, why he lets people work on their own timetable rather than his. This is why he's patient, and content to take things slowly.

"And sure it is. I'm not talking about modding it like my 'berry, or building it like my sonic screwdriver. I'm just talking about . . . you know. Fixing it. Hiding your shit so no one can see it unless you want them to. You might invent something and want patents and things some day, and then you can say - when you're accepting your Nobel prize, 'And thank you to Chuck Charmichael, for making sure my information stayed private and secure,' or something.

[Emily Littleton] "I think," she said, with that wry smirk deeply entrenched now, "That were I before the Nobel Prize comittee, I would feel socially obligated to refer to you as Charles Carmichael..." The British note came forward a bit more when she said his full name.

"For formality's sake, non?"

There was a little pause, here, a thoughtful one. "I think that, if you were to hack my system -- even for the sake of keeping my research private -- I would want to be present for it. To learn and ask questions," and likely to keep things from going too far. "Though we could probably get the lab manager to pay you a consulting fee for stuff like that... since it's the PI that benefits most in that situation."

She shrugged a bit, and leaned against her desk again. She rested her head against his shoulder, since his arm was still around her. This was good. She was definitely calmer than when he'd arrived (startled her [half to death]).

[Charles Carmichael] "I suppose you probably should," he says, amused and wry. "And if your lab manager wants a consultant, I would be willing to act in that capacity. I have before - also as a tutor. So, you know. I'm kind of a modern renaissance man, as it were. A big deal!" He's teasing, obviously - he's too laid back and down to earth to be seriously that arrogant.

She leans in against his shoulder and his arm tightens just a bit, but not enough to hem her in; his head comes down to rest against hers, turning just a little so he can smell her hair, her shampoo. She's calmer, and he appreciates that - it makes him smile that maybe he has something to do with it, even though it could just have been the walk around the lab.

"So, gaming tonight?"

[Emily Littleton] Maybe he did, that is have something to do with it. Emily's labmates certainly hadn't been able to talk her down from agitated and grouchy, no matter how many times she walked around the labspace with them. Maybe there was just something about Chuck, their shared interests, his easy going nature, or his ineffable chill.

"You're looking for an easier matchup, after Riley?" she teases, alluding to the fateful fragfest wherein neither of them had really kicked asses or taken names. Riley had owned that day, hands down. Emily's tone curled wryly, keeping the talk of gaming light and easy between them. It was a pastime, an escape, an easy bonding ritual.

"Or are we still at keeping things collaborative?" You know, the level where no one gets hurt (or feels compelled to launch a youtube site of the winner's victory dance, out of spite). Not that Lego Star Wars really got competitive; she'd noticed the switch in gameplay styles after he'd figured out that she was less than all-together. Emily found it endearing, if entirely unnecessary.

After a moment, she pulled away from the easy embrace. "Either way, I've got to get my stuff together." It's a good reason to keep moving. How she was planning on sitting still long enough to game was anyone's guess.

[Charles Carmichael] "Team work's a good thing," he says in response to the competitive vs. collaborative question. "And we're relaxing, yeah? Maybe a little of both." But yes, it's not as if Lego Star Wars gets truly competitive - even if Chuck's victory dance is an impressive [adorable] thing (born of the 80s as it is).

She pulls away and he lets her, no need to hold on; the tighter one does that, the worse things get, the quicker. Or so it's always seemed to Chuck. (And oh, the arguments he's had about that. "You hardly even care, you aren't trying!" ".....you're kidding, right?") He's earned that chill, that easy going nature. "What do you want to eat? We'll grab something on the way." He assumes they're going together - he can bring her back for her car, or whatever.

And either way, whatever they're picking up for sustenance, they're heading out of the lab and off to Chuck's.