Working out with Jemma.

[runningred]

{{From here}}

Jay is hanging out in the bar early in the morning. Well, early for him. He's dressed in sweats and running shoes, waiting for Jemma.

Comments

[protect_and_survey]

She nods, just on barely on the right side of controlling her breath, and tries to implement the suggestion. It's a bit awkward, an unnatural way of moving for her, something she has to remember to do rather than a habit.

Time, she reminds herself. It'll take time.

"If anything was... natural you'd... think it'd be... running." She pants, a bit annoyed at how easy it is to forget the new hint.

[runningred]

"Not always. It takes time to find the right way for you." He slows down, "Lets walk for a bit. It'll give you a chance to catch your breath before we start jogging again."

[protect_and_survey]

Given permission, she drops down to a walk immediately, trying to get her breathing back under control.

(This is just about the point yesterday she'd started getting dirty looks from agents from Operations who couldn't have been any older than she is.)

"You know, I've never been out here really? It looks a bit like home."

[runningred]

"I like it here. It's peaceful. And other than the killer bunnies, there's nothing to worry about."

Jay walks with her, judging how well she's recovered from the jog. "Do you mind if I ask where home is?"

[protect_and_survey]

"Well, home home is Littlemore, just outside Oxford, but after... oh, halfway through boarding school I spent just as much time with Fitz in Scotland during school holidays." She explains, grinning at the familiar craggy rocks.

She's catching her breath quickly - she's managed to get some conditioning, at least, somewhere along the way.

[runningred]

"Sounds nice. I've only been to England once. London mostly but I liked it there."

"Ready to go again?" He waits for her permission before picking up speed, just a little faster this time.

[protect_and_survey]

"It's peaceful. Well, most of the year, until the undergraduates come." Every year, a few undergraduates settle in Littlemore, and they always... well. It's an exciting time of year, to be sure.

[runningred]

"And undergrads bring all sorts of trouble of their own." Jay grins, knowing all too well how busy the streets of Gotham use to get for the first couple of weeks of a new semester.

He's happy to keep walking for a little longer if she needs it before gently encouraging her to jog again.

[protect_and_survey]

"Every year the forthcoming fall of civilization was predicted." Jemma agrees with a grin, before picking up the pace again.

[runningred]

Jay laughs. "Never made it to collage myself so at least I avoided being responsible for the end of the world." He jogs steadily, letting Jemma set the pace but keeping with her to keep her going.

[protect_and_survey]

Jemma at least has the very good sense to not immediately try and convince Jay that he should go to college - she imagines that would be at least as impressively annoying as the friends and family members who tried to convince her to stop going after advanced degrees (after all dear, you're not getting any younger / there's so much world to see outside the ivory tower / you should go put your stamp on the world).

There'd been some raging fights during those years.

Some still ongoing.

"Small mercies, I'd imagine you'd be creative enough for at least a small apocalypse." She teases, in time with her foot-falls.

[runningred]

"Perhaps not a full apocalypse." Jay chuckles. "A couple of apocryphal apocalypses maybe. At least two full blown disasters." He's being modest. It was three.

[protect_and_survey]

"Come now, we can't have that, you should be working to your full potential." She retorts, dry and drawling - the tones that usually don't make it out of the lab, never mind into Milliways.

Well, a version of those tones, anyway, it's hard to work up a proper boarding-school drawl when your breath is getting tight again.

[runningred]

Jay laughs warmly, "My full potential involves explosions. And breaking at least a couple of the bar rules. I think I'm good running within safe parameters here."

[protect_and_survey]

She can't exactly encourage him to break the rules - breaking the rules makes her deeply uncomfortable, so... it'd just be weird.

"Only a couple?" Mostly she's just curious - and if so, which one is he leaving out?

[runningred]

Jay shoots her a quick smile. "I'm not that sort of exhibitionist. I prefer my amours more private."

[protect_and_survey]

She snickers breathlessly, shaking her head.

"Figures, that's probably... the easiest one to... get away with." Honestly, people do it all the time in the real world - how much harder could it be in a poorly patrolled pub at the end of the universe.

[runningred]

"Sneaking around in corners isn't my style. It's fun from time to time but it's not my way." He drops back to a walk again. "Besides, the bar has plenty of rooms."

[protect_and_survey]

Gratefully she slows to match him - she's pretty sure an Operations agent would already be all the way around the lake, but that's not going to be her today.

"Which is utterly odd - have you seen the stairwells? They'd give a sherpa vertigo."

[runningred]

"I found out there's a way round that. Seems like the spacial dimension of the bar are malleable. Apparently with a bit of negotiation with the Bar herself, you can have extra rooms added, install shortcuts to get from one place to another. I now have a door that goes from my room on the sixth floor to my workshop in the garage without any apparent shift in elevation. It's goes a little Escher if you think to hard about it but it seems to work."

[protect_and_survey]

"You'd need a portal that could account for changing air pressure as well as the physical distance..."
Jemma, distracted by the implications (and shiny, shiny science) slows while trying to work out how that could happen. She really does need to get her hands on one of Fitz's robots.

...

Also, continuing to walk would probably be good.

[runningred]

"Possibly but I haven't noticed any change that would account for the air pressure. Not that I've measured it with anything more sensitive than my own ears." Jay's happy to walk for a bit more.

[protect_and_survey]

"Yes, six floors probably wouldn't be enough to be seriously notable, but have you seen the numbers in the elevator? There's some in the thousands." She agrees, her pace turning meandering as she gets more caught up in the idea and how to make it work.

[runningred]

"I have a feeling the garage shifts. It never seems to be the same number of floors down." Jay tries to keep her at a brisk walk.

[protect_and_survey]

Belatedly she realizes why it seems that suddenly he's hurrying her along. Embarrassment at getting distracted (again, this happened yesterday too) silences her abruptly. In a fit of stubborn self-flagellation, she takes off into a run again.

Focus, Simmons, is it really so hard?