// Play Them And WEEP - Blog Posts
when normal people clock out for work at their jobs, they go home. but home is such a funny ( odd ) concept these days.
he thinks of the girl from kansas / schoolteacher from harlem, with her little dog, desperate to get back to her own time & place after being dropped in a foreign place & time. and looking around, he imagines he could be dorothy right about now, thinking of home.
but what is home? as he hears footsteps approaching — cutting through the rare silence of this office — he supposes home could be a physical location, but without the people there, places lose their meaning & their power.
and then baldwin's extending a cup to him & that definitely puts things into perspective. fitz accepts, because he doesn't have the heart to tell baldwin he despises coffee, but he carefully finds the nearest surface to let the hot cup rest, keeping his hand loosely around the rim. this needs a disturbing amount of sugar & cream.
when he looks at baldwin, reminded of their circumstance, fitz recalls two things: maybe a home can be found in other people, across time & space, but most importantly —
in this scenario, he's definitely toto.
"progress? well, i ...", fitz pivots at the last moment, given the company, "haven't made much, to be honest. surprise, surprise. i think i'm just hoping my brain will finally shut off long enough so i can get up and go ...," home isn't the right word, so he finds a replacement, "back to my ... living quarters?" he shrugs at how it sounds, but whatever — words can be hard.
after a beat, he nods to the cup in his fellow agent's hand. "how often are you making full cups of coffee after midnight, anyway?"
who : anyone where : bullpen when : september 4, 1996 @ 01:17 am
two mugs filled to the brim with freshly made coffee sit on the lounge countertop. he stares at the coffee like he's taking personal offence.
muscle memory is a funny little thing. a mission objective slips his mind , but he can absently make a length of surgical knots with his laces until the fog in his head lifts. he would have missed the meeting on the second if it weren't for every agent headed that way , but his hands went through the motion of making two cups of coffee without any input from his brain. the one on the left has an absrud amount of sugar and a generous pour of cream , while the right is undefiled. the person he made this for is no longer here. he wants to pour the coffee down the sink and smash the mug to smithereens.
he takes a breath and manages to hold on to a thread of calm that threatens to leave him at any given moment. agent london always took his coffee bitter , and agent baldwin doesn't think the extra caffeine in his system will do him any good right now. there was a set of footsteps in the bullpen minutes earlier that he follows, carrying both coffees in his hands.
" i made too much. " he holds the extra one out to them , a mockery of a peace offering in this tense environment. it's late. he's pretty sure neither of them are supposed to be here. he doesn't comment on that topic ; there's no reason to pry into the business of other insomniacs. " are you making progress ? "
