2019-09-05 - Wrong turn at GHFD

Officer Carter Reid doesn't actually officially start his new position at the Gray Harbor Police Department until next week, but since he arrived in town the previous day, he decides to check in, orient himself with the place, and make sure he knows where he needs to go when the time comes. That, and he needs to get out from under the pile of boxes and cleaning for a little while. And so he is seemingly aimlessly wandering through the office. The receptionist is busy, so he starts heading to the left, toward the fire station, not realizing he's going the wrong way.

One of the toughest things to get used to in the fire department is the shift work. Long hours can really get to a guy, unless you’re Lucas and learned to expect such things from an early age. All he had to do was look to was his father.

“I’ll be up in a minute,” he can be heard shouting from the ground floor garage, where he’s busying himself with organizing some of the gear. He’s got his phone on a table nearby playing some alternative rock that he’s humming along to.

It’s a pretty relaxed environment for now, but this city can too often shatter that in a moment.

Carter comes wandering into the garage and for a moment he just stands there, looking confused as there are fire engines, and not police vehicles. "Wait.." he says outloud before realizing that he'd just said it outloud. He turns around and glances back over his shoulder. "I think I'm in the wrong place.. sorry." He smiles a little apologetically, and turns to head back the way in which he came.

"You wouldn't believe how often that happens," says a blonde woman with shoulder length hair as she pops out of the back of an ambulance in the adjacent bay. Sutton wears a pair of dark blue cargo pants, boots, a belt that's definitely not to regs (studs and a decorative crow buckle), along with a GHFD tee, also dark blue, with PARAMEDIC across the upper back. Isn't it nice of them to label the medics?

She jams a bag of supplies in back of the rig, then mutters something that sounds like, "The hell is there still glitter in this fucker." That's how you can tell the PD and the FD get along sharing a building: glitter problems. From inside the rig, slightly muffled: "We've sanitized this thing twenty three times."

At hearing an unfamiliar voice cut through the garage, Lucas stops what he’s doing and turns, fire helmet in hand, to spot Carter over by the door. He tries, for a moment, to place the man, but instead ends up frowning. “You need some help?” he asks, walking over to the stranger before he can sneak back out of the garage. In a building like this, someone has to check up on people who don’t belong here.

Carter chuckles a bit and rubs at the back of his neck. "Carter Reid," he introduces himself. "I'm supposed to be starting with GHPD next week, and I just came by to figure out where I'm supposed to go.. which is probably a good thing, because I'm lost. I think I'm supposed to be in the building on the other side." He glances back the way that he came, and then back to Lucas. "This is the fire department, right?"

Sutton hops down from the ambulance, pulling off a pair of nitrile gloves which she promptly tosses into a nearby trash can. She pulls out a folding chair, sets it up behind the ambulance, and kicks back with her feet up on the bumper, a packet of crisps in hand. Quick snack before the inevitable next callout for dehydration or public intoxication or something else small town regular. Very rarely is it something double-weird, and the murders have slowed down. She leans back in her chair, balanced on two legs, which is a dangerous gamble on a crap folding chair.

So the new guy’s lost? Lucas smirks at that and shoots a quick glance over to Sutton as he passes by her and the ambulance. Stopping in front of Carter, he shrugs and says, “You tell me.” Given that he’s also wearing a GHFD tee and, well, the other obvious elements in the garage, he doesn’t actually expect to be told anything, so he just introduces himself. “Lucas,” he says, wiping his free hand off on the side of his trousers before offering it to the other man.

Carter gives Lucas' hand a shake in greeting and says, "Hey. Nice to meet you." He glances over toward Sutton, giving her a nod as well in greeting before he says. "Sorry, new town, new everything. Didn't mean to interrupt what you were doing." He gestures toward the gear. "It is.. back that way, right?" he asks, just hoping to confirm that he's not going to be going the wrong way again if he heads back in that direction.

Sutton's smirk is more expertly hidden behind a crunchy, flavored snack before she pops it into her mouth. "It's ok, new guy. The only person around here you gotta say sorry to lives on the other side of the building and likes to yell. I hope you like writing speeding tickets." Eventually she remembers her manners. "Sutton."

"You can just go right on through the building, love. We share reception." She turns her radio down a little when it chirps, leaving it to rest on her knee rather than leaving it clipped to her belt. "We're waiting for disaster or minor inconvenience to strike. You're not interrupting. You could always stay, tell us about yourself. Where you came from, your blood type. You know." She crunches a crisp. "Small talk."

Lucas’s handshake is firm and strong, if not a bit grimy. When he pulls back and hears what Sutton has to say, he peers over his shoulder at her and lifts a finger. “Oh wait,” he says, “I’m good at this.” He snaps his fingers and looks back to Carter, studying him while stroking his chin for a moment. “A-positive.” He sounds pretty sure of himself, though guessing blood types isn’t something he’s known for at all.

"Who's that?" Carter asks Sutton with both brows raised, a little curiously. Though he chuckles when she says he should stay and tell them about himself. But then Lucas is trying to guess his blood type and he waits while the decision is made. He shakes his head though when Lucas guesses and says, "O negative, actually. Universal donor." He then glances back to Sutton and says, "And I came from San Francisco. My sister and I just moved up here yesterday."

"Your Captain. He's a very surly Mexican." Sutton crunches through another chip. "Can't miss him. You can see his office from the break room, where the donuts live." Never you mind how she knows where the PD donuts live.

The blonde flicks her fingers through her hair. "O neg, really? Well, we're gonna be really good friends with you. First order of business for new recruits, roll down to the hospital before your first day and donate blood. It's a goodwill gesture. Very community minded, our departments. If you bring your Captain that little heart donation sticker they give you, he might not yell at you your whole first week on."

"San Fran, huh? Nice. Welcome to Gray Harbor, Carter." Sutton turns her radio up a little as a call goes out, but it's not for her, so she shortly turns it back down.

“Ah well,” Lucas says when it turns out he’s wrong about Carter’s blood type. His shoulders lift briefly as he steps off to the side to lean back against the wall. There, he doesn’t have to look over his shoulder so much.

“What brings you all the way up here? Not that up here isn’t nice, but it’s pretty far off San Francisco.”

"Oh," Carter says when Sutton mentions the Captain and points out where he can be found. "Second donut to the right, and straight on til morning." He seems to relax a bit gradually as the three of them talk, leaning up against the wall near the door instead of standing half-in and half-out of it as though he might bolt at any second. "I do try to donate pretty regularly," he admits before nodding. "Yeah, I'm going to miss it but we just couldn't afford to live there, and our dad left us this place up here, so we're going to clean it out and try to make something of it. It's kind of a mess, but not as bad as it could be."

Sutton grins at the Peter Pan reference, nodding. "Pretty much exactly that." She tips back a little more, chair creaking ever so slightly. "Good for you. We need more universal in the bank, always. People have been cycling through the ER on the regular in recent days." She doesn't elaborate on that, but a paramedic is someone who'd know. Best not scare off the new blood just yet. "I'm from Seattle, so it's... different for me here, too, but you'll adjust. The community is pretty friendly." Aside from all the murders. And... ghosts. Not saying that out loud. Mm-mm. "I'm sorry for your loss. Hey, if you need any help, I'm good at painting in exchange for tequila and pizza."

Lucas rests the helmet against his hip and holds it there, looking more or less relaxed, though his posture suggests that he’s ready to move should a call come in. “Yeah, I’m sorry to hear that. Welcome to the neighborhood, though.” He offers Carter a quick smile and then looks over to Sutton. “We’re definitely pretty friendly. Mostly.” He shrugs, chuckles, and turns back to the new officer. “You’ll see.”

Carter doesn't seem quite scared off, but he does make note of the heightened ER usage, and some of the things that she says, even if he doesn't ask or comment about them directly. Instead, he says, "It wasn't really a loss. We never met him. Claire and I were put into foster care when we were really little. We didn't even know who he was until the lawyers showed up and told us we had a house, and could inherit whatever he had left as long as we moved into Gray Harbor and occupied it for at least a year." He shrugs his shoulders, "Considering we were floundering to stay afloat in San Francisco, it seemed a pretty decent deal, especially when I was able to land this job. So.. here we are. I'm figuring we'll figure out who he was as we dig through all the crap in the house." He then nods to Lucas and says, "Well you two are the first people I've actually met in town -- so that seems to hold true so far."

"Mostly." Sutton echoes, smiling. She crinkles her crisp bag, finishes off the last one and then tosses it. "Oh, well. Okay, then congratulations on a timely inheritance just when you could use one. It's..." She pauses, then says, "Good to have your sister along. Family's important." She chuckles.

"Firefighters and EMS will do most anything for booze and food. Seriously, though. If you need any help, all you have to do is put a call out and you'll have an army of hungry red and blue on your lawn helping you clean. Probably making a bigger mess while we're at it, but..."

She's almost back to her chair when her radio crackles. She flips her wrist to check her watch. "Oh, come on. 30 minutes." She shakes her head and says, "Later, men. Duty calls. Pray for a vomit-free ride." She jogs around the side of the rig as a call goes out for Medic 24. She hops in the passenger side, and another medic shoots out of the back, zipping up to jump in the driver's side. Lights, no sirens, and the rig pulls out to head off into the wild Gray Harbor yonder.

Part of what Lucas always liked about this job was watching how quickly people switch gears when a call comes in. One second they’re lounging around with a bag of chips, the next their ass is in gear and their working like a team who never takes a break. Adrenaline and discipline can do wonders.

As he watches the ambulance head off into the world, he says to Carter, “That is pretty…timely. Don’t know what I would do in that situation.” He turns to look at the man and asks, “Nervous?”

Carter gives Sutton a thumbs-up and says, "I'll let Claire know. Maybe once we have some of the stuff sorted, we'll have a big pizza and beer fest and just have everyone over to help haul stuff away and clean and paint and move stuff back in." But then there's a call and she's off. He watches as the ambulance pulls out and then turns back to Lucas. "Yeah, I mean, we could have made it there for a while longer but.. things were definitely getting kind of thin. So.. this coming along.. things just kind of fell into place. We'll see how it goes." When asked if he's nervous he considers it for a moment and then nods "Little bit. Little overwhelmed. Mostly just with all the changes. But.. it'll be okay."

Lucas turns and leans sidelong against the wall now, facing Carter with his helmet still propped up against him. He blinks a few times and takes a moment to just stare, it seems like. That happens we first meets someone who glimmers, though he always shakes the feeling off, as he does now with a literal headshake. “Of course it will.” He taps a finger against the helmet, which makes an audible sound. “Hey, let me know if you want to grab a beer after work sometime. If our shifts ever match up. Might help you settle in?”

Truth is, Carter's never met anyone who Glimmers before, and so even as he studies Lucas, he notices something about him, but he doesn't quite know what it is in order to properly process it. Little does he know his own latent abilities began to awaken as soon as he and Claire crossed over the border into Gray Harbor. He looks a little curious at the headshake and asks "You okay?" But then he nods and says, "Yeah.. actually, that'd be great. It'll be nice to have someone to talk to here. I mean.. besides my sister, who is amazing and would kick me if I said otherwise.. but you know what I mean." He grins.

Lucas grins back and says, “I know /exactly/ what you mean.” Must have a sister, too. “I’m good,” he explains, “just getting to the end of my shift is all. Got a few days off coming up, though, so all’s good.” He smirks and moves a step away from the wall. “Grab my number if you’re free,” he says. “I’m sure you’ll be busy digging through that house, though.”

Carter grins when Lucas says that he knows exactly what Carter means, drawing the inference, "Got a sister, too?" He nods when Lucas says that he's getting to the end of his shift and says, "Well you're welcome to come on by to hang out and meet Claire and whatnot while we work. We won't even try to bribe you to help." He chuckles. "Since I'm not starting for a while yet. So if you've got some time off.." He pulls out his phone then and he offers it over to Lucas, so that he can put his info into it.

Lucas reaches for the phone and starts to input his information. “Yeah, I’ve got an older sister,” he says, though he doesn’t elaborate on that. He’s already said she’s great, right? Or at least implied it? “And that sounds great. You don’t need to bribe anyone, by the way. We try to help each other out.” He motions with a thumb between the two department buildings. “I gotta get back to work, but I’ll hit you up.” He takes a few steps back to where his phone still plays some tunes and gives Carter a wave.