circle7 | Garamond and Calibri Playdate :D

Garamond and Calibri Playdate :D

“I had a feeling I’d find you here,” Garamond was careful to close the door behind him as he made his way into the lab. He knew Calibri wasn’t fond of disturbances. “Hope you’re not busy. We need to get packed and going in an hour or so.”

Garamond sauntered up to the second-in-command’s working desk, carrying a brochure and a couple of tickets. He laid them out on the desk over Calibri’s notes, as if intentionally trying to deflect the other man from his work. The brochure advertised a convention for bioinformatics and other scientific ventures. “Here,” he said, pointing to the image of some strange, aquatic creature on the cover – an invertebrate from the looks of it, possibly a Cephalopod. “You wanted to see this, didn’t you?”

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“Uh-huh,” Garamond replied hollowly.

He shifted back into his seat once Calibri was done explaining, his glance now shifting impatiently between the speaker and the crowd. Eventually, the drone of the professor was tuned out, and his boredom fell over him like a heavy blanket.

Minutes into the presentation, there was a small weight against Calibri’s shoulder. Garamond, having fallen asleep with his arms crossed, had fallen into Calibri’s side.

Calibri, of course, didn't even notice the extra weight until the lecture was over. His jacket, constantly weighed down by varying liquid volumes of irritants, solutions, and vials of less pleasant mixtures had made him accustomed to the feeling of heaviness around his shoulders, and in addition, the professor's long, tedious, and almost exhausting talk was, to him at least, awfully captivating. It was only when the lights blinked on after the presentation ended that Calibri remembered the company he had brought along, and upon turning to ask Garamond how he was faring, found himself promptly with a mouthful of the man's hair.

"Bo-mmph!"

Very promptly, he leaned his head away. It took only a split second after that for him to realize the state they were in, and judging from the muffled amusement from their previously-irritated neighbors, it hadn't taken them much longer to notice either. With a dip in his brow being the only evidence of his long-suffering mentality, Calibri thought for a second before deciding that there was really no subtler way to do this. He shrugged the offended shoulder very slightly, barely enough to stir the other man, and cleared his throat. "...Boss. Boss, the lecture is finished. Please wake up."

Calibri’s gentle approach to waking the older man was predictably not successful. Garamond, on average, did not get a lot of sleep. He made up for this deprivation by sleeping twice as hard during the slim few hours that his days allotted him. While the second-in-command’s shove did not wake him, it did cause him to lose his balance, and he landed face-down in Calibri’s lap.

If Calibri were a man of lesser composure, he would have yelled out.

As it was, he just froze until he comprehended the situation, which only took a second at most, and, ignoring the curious glances of the people passing around them as they left the auditorium, placed a hand on Garamond's face. At first, he hit it lightly, alternating between pats on the cheek and shaking the man's shoulders, before, with an impatient huff, Calibri all but slapped his superior with a resounding crack.

“OW!” Garamond yelped out, cringing back from Calibri’s strike.

Still nested in Calibri’s lap, he curled his hands over the offended spot on his head, turning to glance up at Calibri with and indignant scowl.

“What the hell was that for?!”

Calibri pointedly stared down. When, after a moment, it seemed like Garamond was still not intent on moving his head from his lap, he looked away, rather callously. "I'm sorry, Boss, my hand slipped."

“You’ve got some gall to go hitting your superiors, you know,” Garamond mumbled back as he finally rose in his seat, his brow scrunching as he glanced out over the empty seats in front of him. He blinked vacantly.

“So it’s over already, huh?” He yawned out.

"I didn't hit you, sir," Calibri said, a bit petulantly. "My hand slipped while I was trying to shake you awake. I apologize."

Most of the others had already left the scene, probably hurrying onto the next lecture of interest. Even the lecturer himself had long since collected his heaping pile of notes and wandered out the stage door, leaving the two of them in an evacuated auditorium, the lights on but low, set to a dim. To his credit, then, Calibri raised a hand to Garamond's face, feeling around the area of injury. The cloth of his sleeve separated his hand from making skin contact, but that was probably for the better - the mottled fingers were probably better off unseen.

Upon letting it drop, Calibri nodded. "It finished a few minutes ago. I don't dare say that you were enthralled by the exposition." And that made one wonder. Tilting his head back up, Calibri frowned. "How and why did you obtain the tickets, Boss? You are clearly no fan of this study."

Calibri’s wallop had caused some reddening, but not a bruise. Compared to the wounds Garamond had contracted before, this was nothing, but it didn’t stop him from groaning in protest when it was touched (melodramatic, really).

“Threats, blackmail,” Garamond answered, flat-toned. “You know, the usual.”

"Oh," Calibri said, accepting that answer simply enough, regardless of whether Garamond was joking or not. Even if he hadn't been, the response wouldn't really have struck the second-in-command as strange, considering their line of work, and considering, more specifically, Calibri's own strange sense of 'morals.' Thus unfettered, he stood up, stretching out his legs. He hadn't even noticed the hours pass, and the muscles strained as he stood. In fact, his right leg was hardly ready for the impact, and almost immediately, filled with the uncomfortable sensation of pins and needles, like a thousand tiny insects crawling down his veins, and in slight surprise, the young man toppled down almost as quickly as he stood.

“GWAHAHAHAHA,” Garamond exploded with laughter so loud that it seemed to shake the curtained enclosure. Standing, Garamond extended a hand to his second-in-command. “You need a hand there, Calibri? What’s got you stumbling over your own feet?”

“This event’s funded in part by a big name school,” The mob boss explained as he lifted Calibri by the wrist. “We’ve done a lot of ‘favors’ for that school, you could say, so it just kind of worked out in my favor.”

If Calibri hadn't been accustomed to the sound of Garamond's explosive laughter, he might have cringed. Even as he raised his head, he could see, from the out of the corner of his eye, shadows pausing in the slit underneath the closed doors as passer-bys no doubt stopped and stared curiously at the entrance, wondering about the strange sound echoing from inside. "My foot, sir," he said quietly, with a very slight hint of embarrassment. He cleared his throat before continuing. "It's numb."

“Well no better way to get rid of that than to walk it off,” Garamond replied, yanking Calibri forward (no doubts sending a tingling resistance down to the second-in-command’s sleeping foot in the process).

"Nnngh!" It was a helpless response, and while Calibri would usually be better in possession of his voice, the surprise as uncomfortable sensation shot up his leg superseded that. Instinctively, Calibri clung to the closest anchor (that being Garamond, since it was the man himself who yanked him forward) as his legs quite literally and not at all metaphorically went weak at the knees. He almost face-planted right into the other man's stomach, only managing to catch himself with his other leg at the last minute, and with an indignant edge to his voice, snapped, "Boss!"

“Hey, easy—” Garamond anchored his hands on Calibri’s shoulders, holding the man in place in case he decided to lose his balance again. Calibri was rarely this cross with him. His second-in-command’s frustrated expression teased another small laugh out of the mob boss. "That must be some serious numbing."

"Your head is very heavy, sir," Calibri said, by means of retort, and it was a rare show of humor and wit that was not acidic, for once. After a moment, with the blood rushing back into his extremities, he managed to stand up to full height on his own, and gradually, the strange discomfort faded, as did his frustration. It was replaced with a clearly awkward embarrassment, judging from the way the second-in-command kept his head down even as he pushed his glasses up, looking at their feet. "I'm all right now, though."

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Garamond and Calibri Playdate :D

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