Day at the Office (open)

Leila had just finished dumping six spoons of sugar into her half-milk half-coffee mug when she turned around and saw Cobalt come through the back room.

"Coffee?" she offered with an inner sigh. But it looked like this guy needed it more than she did.

As he reached out to take the mug, she looked down at the sleeve of his blazer. She stared for a moment, then said:

"What. Is. On. Your. Sleeve."

He looked down and shrugged, making some noncommittal response.

"Might that perchance be paint?"

He looked blank.

"From the door?"

Still no response.

"That I just finished painting and put a sign that said 'Wet Paint' next to it?"

"Oh."

Leila took a deep breath and walked out into the main lobby. She pulled out a towel and a bucket of water, then got to work washing the smudged letters off the door, so that it only read "Bl..........old Law Firm." It left some smudging--the paint would never really come off completely, so the glass would always have that little bit of a smudge to it. Hopefully no one with OCD came by.

Leila debated going back in for some coffee of her own before beginning to paint again, but wasn't exactly sure what to say to Cobalt. She glanced back into the office at the motivational posters and the box litter all over the room. She still wished she had someone to help her put everything together, or even somebody else to just come by.

"Cranky..." she muttered under her breath. Her breeze whipped around her head and under her undershirt, lifting it off her back for half a moment before she tugged it back down. A shadow fell across her work.

Leila glanced up at the clouds moving in that had cast a shadow over her work. She sighed and shook her head, taking the hint to move indoors before she got sunburned or it started raining.

She glanced around the main room of the office, hands on her hips, and sighed gently. She went over to her desk and pulled out a bottle of Excedrin. She downed two pills and went back to work, opening boxes and crates and restacking items. Every stack of papers was quickly weighed down with a rock in order to keep it from all blowing around.

She left the door open. It was still a nice day outside, and she wanted the opportunity to enjoy it, at least a little. Finally she'd gotten one work space up and usable. One desk, complete with computer, printer, office supplies, rolling chair behind and two high-backed wooden chairs in front. Very professional. To one side of the desk she placed a low bookcase, creating an L-shape that provided a neat cubby for someone to work in. The bookcase was already full with all of her favorite legal texts and a few select comics.

"I'm going to need to get a plant, or a fish, or something," Leila said to herself. Her head was pounding less, but she took an Advil just to be sure it stayed that way.

Now that her desk was set up and there wasn't as much hard work to be done, Leila pulled out her overshirt again and buttoned it up. She pulled out a hair-tie and pulled back all but a few strands of the blond mop. Whistling once again, she began to head toward the back room for another cup of coffee.

Leila stuck her tongue out at Cobalt’s back about the plant comment and vowed to get a climbing vine as soon as possible. With any luck it would climb all over the office and dig into Cobalt’s desk.

She also frowned at his comment about sleep. She vowed to slip some sleep medication into the last cup of coffee for the day. Hopefully he wouldn’t notice. The good news was that he was a coffee-holic, and he didn’t pay too much attention to what went into the fix.

When he started going after her own medication, though, it’d gotten to be a bit too much.

“Look, sir, I don’t know if you understand the concept of a headache that won’t go away no matter what you do, but even if you did, I’m fairly certain you’d just take it upon yourself as some sort of punishment that you think you deserve for some unwitting crime you committed at one point in your life, or even just thought you committed. See, I’m not like that, and I’m not going to just take this pain as some sort of punishment that I just have to live with, so I’m going to keep doing this until there’s something better out there. If you ever find something to get rid of the pain for me—since just putting on a pair of glasses doesn’t work for those of us who don’t work in total darkness—then I’ll be happy to accept the substitute.”

Leila didn’t understand his anger at the medication. She figured he just didn’t understand the way it felt to go home every night and not be able to listen to the television because the noise left a pounding in her head. It hurt just to talk to people on a regular basis—another benefit to working with someone who didn’t talk unless necessary.

Cobalt made a short comment, and Leila sighed. She understood it was an act of peace, and she decided to accept. “You’re welcome, partner,” she said. “Though you know that me setting up means that I automatically put myself in the best place in the office.” She pointed at the air conditioner fan right above her head and grinned.

At this moment she noticed that someone had come in through the open door and was standing there. She felt a gentle blush and wondered how much he had heard.

Cobalt started, turning to give the intruder his best glare. He didn’t hear the other man come in, and didn’t much appreciate being startled, especially in the middle of an argument he’d rather not be having with his intern. It was a little unprofessional. His eyebrow shot up once the other man introduced himself. Joshua Bernstein. He’d heard of him. It was hard not to hear of another civil rights lawyer in this middle-of-nowhere town. But aside from his occupation, Cobalt didn’t know very much about the man—he and Leila had just set up here, after all. There hadn’t been much time to get much information on the man. He knew that Bernstein was non-meta, approximately 50 years old, and, judging by the faint smell of tobacco, smokes.

At Bernstein’s explanation, he shot Leila an annoyed look. He’d really have to talk to her about arranging social visits during work time. He glanced at the clock, only to discover that it was technically lunchtime. Oh.

He extended his hand and shook Bernstein’s, “Cobalt Weaver. You’ve already met my intern,” He shot Leila a serious look that she clearly didn’t take very seriously, “And no. We aren’t too busy yet.” Cobalt turned Bernstein’s hand in his grip to reveal smudged yellow paint on his sleeve. He smirked, “I guess I’m not the only one who ignored the Wet Paint sign.” He turned to Leila, “I don’t know why you don’t just use the stickers. Everyone else uses the stickers. It’s cheaper anyways.” He let go of Bernstein’s hand and returned to his desk, reaching for his coffee cup.

“So what can we do for you today?” Cobalt figured that ‘what do you want’ wouldn’t be a very professional way to address a fellow civil rights attorney. Yet. He still didn’t know why he was here or if he was someone they could trust. Still, Leila had to have invited him here for a reason. And it better not have been because she thought Cobalt needed friends…

Josh opened his mouth, about to respond to the greeting when Cobalt brought to his attention that he had paint on his sleeve. "...Hmm. How about that." He commented, twisting about to look at the door he had inadvertently ruined along with his jacket. He cringed a bit when Leila began pointedly grumbling about his carelessness; she was absolutely correct, he should have paid attention. He had been so intent on finding out more about the new attorneys in town that he'd not even thought to check for signs.

"Sorry..." he shrugged uncomfortably before turning his attention back toward the other man. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Weaver." It would particularly be a pleasure if Leila's assessment about her partner (boss)'s interests was true, and he had no reason to doubt her, even if she was showing a surprising lack of maturity by sticking her tongue out at Cobalt. This didn't seem to be appropriate work place behavior...

"Ms. Gold has informed me that you are interested in meta-human rights. I'm not entirely pleased with the term meta-human, myself, but there seems to be a dearth of appropriate terms that don't hinge upon making one group an off shoot of the other. It's very frustrating, almost as frustrating as the lack of interest most people show. If one more person tells me that they aren't treated that badly, there's no prejudice..." He shook his head in disgust. He tried to make people understand, but few of them seemed to truly get it. "Even subtle discrimination is still discrimination. I'm sure you agree?" Perhaps it was unsurprising that another civil rights attorney would be interested in meta-human rights, but he'd had such little fortune finding anyone to agree with him that the mere possibility of someone to share his woes with was tantalizing. He would truly be crushed if the other attorney showed any apathy toward his chosen cause.

After a minute he realized that this was not perhaps the best answer to what can we do for you today so he added, "I was just stopping by to say hello during my lunch break. I like to know my fellow lawyers."

Josh was shocked enough at Cobalt's rant to listen in silence until the other attorney had finished. Shocked, but entirely delighted. Most of the metas he had encountered regarded Hammel as the slim thread connecting them to their sanity during adolescence, and while he respected their need for a community and a safe place he entirely agreed with Cobalt that this forced segregation only hurt relationships between the meta and non-meta populations.

"Exactly!!" He crowed, resisting the urge to dance with joy -- or to hug the younger man. Not only was his fellow attorney interested in meta-human rights, but he understood how harmful the Institute's monopoly truly was. Even Sean, bright as he was, disagreed with Josh's obviously morally correct position, blinded by school spirit and company loyalty. Granted, Hammel was an improvement over Sean's family, who for some reason that confounded Josh completely, operated by cutting off members they disagreed with. Coming from a very close family himself he found this behavior as perplexing as he found the fact that someone as gentle and accepting as Sean had emerged from such a system.

"Educators ought to be trained to deal with meta issues, the same way they are trained to deal with religious identity and gender identity and ethnicity or anything else that supposedly sets a child apart from his or her peers. If Hammel Institute were one option out of many then there wouldn't be a problem, but there isn't any choice, not for the parents or for the children. Apparently isolation for all of their formative years is the only available path."

He frowned at the comment about the term meta-human versus the term mutant. "Just because mutant is impolite doesn't make meta-human any better..." He muttered, annoyed that every single person he talked to seemed to have the idea that the word meta-human was tolerable simply because there were more offensive words that could be applied.

"As am I!" He agreed, the obvious delight written across his face in direct opposition to the scowl on Cobalt's. "Particularly in regards to meta-human education. Truly I have met very few individuals who agree with me on that particular issue. I'm quite glad I ran into Ms. Gold and thrilled she invited me here."

He glanced toward the door once more as thunder rumbled in the distance. He'd ignored the gathering clouds on his way here, hoping they would clear out before he had to return to the firm he worked for, but that didn't look as if it was going to be the case.

Ah, well, perhaps it would blow over quickly. He still had time to sit and chat and Cobalt Weaver was turning out to be a very interesting man. Definitely someone he wanted to get to know, that was certain. "What brings you and Ms. Gold to Pilot Ridge?"