"Didn't really make the decision myself, I was wearing it when I got snatched." It could have been so much worse -- she could have been coming out of the shower, or in her pyjamas.
She bumps his shoulder a little with hers, making a face at his speech about low expectations. Hopefully it's just his low self-esteem talking, and not really an accurate picture of how his coworkers feel about him. Because if that's the case, it might be a little more difficult for her to keep her head down and stay out of trouble. "I don't know the first thing about adverts or how they're made, I doubt anyone will be impressed by that."
Madison Avenue seems very quintessentially New York to her -- busy and crowded, important-looking buildings towering over them. She sticks close to Ginsberg as they make their way toward his office, lest she end up lost and having to check every building on the street to find him again.
"Oh, you don't need to know anything about them. Half of us don't, either, and we make the damn things. It's really just a big old game of bullshit. But I guess that eliminates my plan to claim that you're from a rival ad agency and you're scoping out the competition."
He very likely wouldn't have done that anyway, since half of his coworkers can be downright brutal when it comes to the competition, and the other half wouldn't believe it for a second. It's a lot funnier in his own mind than it would have been in reality.
Pushing open the door to one of the buildings, he holds it for her, and gestures for her to step through into the lobby. Then it's just a few steps to the elevator, which he presses the call button for. Strange, how these movements he'd made every day for so long seem a little odd, now, like he has to get used to them again. He's back here on the exact same day he'd left, but his mind still feels like it's been seven months.
"My agency is on one of the top floors. I mean, I'm calling it my agency like I own the place. The people I work for, how about that."
Conveniently, the elevator sees fit to arrive at that exact moment, sparing him from more babbling.
"I'm sort of rubbish at bullshit. Though I suppose I'm better at it than I used to be." Thank you, Torchwood, for teaching her how to lie semi-convincingly. "Could still tell them that, it'll make them feel pretty confident about themselves when they see how awful at it the 'competition' is. I faked being a doctor once."
She might be able to carry off something like that very briefly, if no one asked her any questions.
"Never know, maybe it will be your agency someday." She steps into the elevator when the doors open, taken aback for a moment by the novelty of an attendant, who politely corrects her when she reaches toward the buttons herself. "Time to learn not to push every button and flip every switch I come across, I suppose."
"You faked being a doctor? I really hope you weren't taking any patients during that time. Although some of the doctors I've had might as well have gotten their degrees out of a cereal box, for all they seemed to know. Those were usually the psychologists, though. Have you ever faked being one of those?"
The elevator attendant knows where they're going, so he feels free to continue the conversation uninterrupted by pushing any buttons, although he does nod politely to a couple people who step into the elevator after them. It's not clear whether he works with them or whether he just knows them from seeing around the building, but it's obvious that, no matter what he may say, he's capable of being at least somewhat polite and subdued in a work setting.
When they reach the floor that SC&P is located on, he steps out of the elevator, and then pauses for a moment. It all looks the same (of course it does) but it's been so long since he's seen it... He wants to embrace the very walls. He manages not to.
"Okay, I'm just going to grab my stuff from my designated corner of the creative lounge and tell whoever I can find that I'm leaving. They won't mind. You can follow me around, if you want, get a sense of how it all works. I'll tell you right now, though -- the answer's alcohol, usually."
"Only dead ones." She grins at his expression. "Had to go undercover as a pathologist. It wasn't meant to be me, but Owen was hungover and not answering his phone." The fact that she blithely relates all of this without seeming to think there's anything at all unusual says a lot about the work environment she's used to.
When they arrive at their destination, Tosh takes a deep breath and falls in behind Ginsberg, her earlier cheer and confidence giving way to the shy uncertainty of a person faced with a completely alien situation. There's no way she won't be sticking to him like his shadow, at least until she gets some kind of feel for her surroundings and how they operate. It almost reminds her of the day she started university.
"Well, most of our work is fueled by pizza and coffee, so I'm not one to judge."
"Yeah, sure, of course, that all makes total sense."
Her job strikes him as incredibly bizarre, and he's saying that as a guy that's sometimes the only sober one in the office (the incident where everyone had done speed is still very much fresh in his mind; he doesn't think he's ever going to forget just how ridiculously everyone was acting, himself included, and he hadn't even done any drugs.)
"So, uh..."
He leads them down a hallway and into a large room. It's fairly nondescript, except for the fact that every wall is papered with drawings, some of which are intricate and some of which are simply half-finished sketches, photos, words, storyboards, and all manner of ad ideas. It's ridiculously colorful, and his excessively colorful outfit almost seems to fit in, here.
"This is where the magic happens, I guess. For a given value of magic. And that over there--" He gestures to the end of the table, where a bearded man is intently working on sketching something out. "--That's Stan. I'm going to guess he's ignoring me right now, for whatever reason, probably because of something irritating I said, until he realizes that I'm here with a visitor who's new and interesting, and then he'll probably look up and..."
At that moment, Stan looks up from his drawing, and offers the both of them a huge grin. Ginsberg looks at Tosh and shakes his head. "See? What'd I say, that was just a given. Stan, this is Tosh. Tosh, this is Stan."
There's definite affection in his voice, even as he's rolling his eyes.
The creative lounge is nothing like the kind of place Tosh is used to working. She's always surrounded by machinery and computer screens, artificial light and the ever-present noises of the rift manipulator and the running water of the fountain above them. This is new and fascinating, and she finds herself drifting a little around the room, looking at the sketches and storyboards.
She does turn back to face the two men when Ginsberg makes his introduction, with a grin of her own. "Pleased to finally meet you, Stan. Hope we aren't interrupting anything too impossible to recover."
With a half-teasing look, she adds in Ginsberg's direction, "Your workspace is loads nicer than mine."
Stan's obviously eyeing the two of them, trying to determine whether Tosh is Ginsberg's girlfriend, and, if not (or even if so, if Ginsberg knows the guy well enough, and he thinks he does) if he can get away with hitting on her. Perhaps fortunately, Tosh speaks again before he has the chance to start up with something ridiculous, and Ginsberg shrugs.
"Yeah, it's an okay workplace, except for the pest problem."
He looks meaningfully in Stan's direction as he says it. It's a pretty weak joke, but Stan laughs anyway, and flips him off. For a moment, Ginsberg's so relieved to be back home, in a room with people he actually likes, that he can hardly stand it. Then he remembers himself, and doesn't start any emotional blathering. Instead, he just smiles at Tosh. "Give me just a second," he says, "I've got to tell someone I'm leaving, and then we can go."
With that, he leaves her for a brief moment as he goes off down the hall in search of Peggy. If he knows her, she won't question him leaving, at least, not more than perfunctorily. In the meantime, he figures Tosh has enough to look at with all the sketches on the walls, and maybe a decent conversation, too, if she strikes one up with Stan.
He's back within three minutes, coat and a pile of papers in hand.
"Remind me to tell you sometime about our pest problem." Not in front of Stan, though, because there's no way she can even approach the idea of a pet dinosaur without sounding completely nuts, and probably causing difficulty for Ginsberg in the process.
She does laugh at the joke, though, and nods encouragingly when he wants to run off and deal with whoever needs to know that he's taking the rest of the day. Tosh can hold her own with Stan's flirtation, and does indeed manage an enjoyable conversation with him while she waits. It doesn't do anything to solve his dilemma about whether she's dating Ginsberg or not, but she thinks she does all right in convincing him that she's harmless and not-crazy.
"No trouble, then?" Three minutes wouldn't have been nearly enough time back at the Hub, not to navigate everyone's nosy need for details on exactly why she'd be taking off suddenly in the middle of the day. But they're probably all a lot more polite here.
"Nope, none at all. Told her I felt like I was going to throw up, and she pretty much flung me out of the office and slammed the door behind me. See you around, Stan."
He gets waved off with a "See you around, asshole" directed at him, although Tosh gets a much more pleasant wave and a "Nice to meet you!" before Stan returns to his storyboarding. Ginsberg briefly wonders what pitch he's working on, and then shakes his head to clear it. Of course, it's the same damn pitch he'd been working on the last time Ginsberg had seen him -- time hasn't passed here, though over six months had passed in the City. That's going to take some getting used to. He'll have to be careful not to slip up and say something that makes it sound like he's been gone for a long time, although even if he does, people'll probably just chalk it up to his inherent oddness.
"Okay," he says, turning back to Tosh, eager look on his face, like he's delighted to have her here (and he really, really is. It's a little embarrassing, in fact.) "What do you want to do first? I mean, do you want to be shown around the city? Do you want to get something to eat? Do you want to... I mean, whatever you want to do, it's up to you."
Honestly, it's pretty flattering to have someone be that openly pleased to have her around, and Tosh has to resist the strongest urge to hug him for that eager look. Instead, she grins back at him and takes a deep breath, looking around the people they pass as they head down to the entrance. It's sort of weird all of a sudden, the realization that she's here for good, that at some point, somehow, she'll just up and vanish from her life in her own time. That she'll have to learn how to live in this time, which is neither quiet familiar enough nor quite alien enough to be entirely comfortable yet.
"Something to eat sounds perfect. Sort of...ease back into the normal world, you know? I keep catching myself wondering things like why everyone looks so much the same, why I can't hear the clock ticking, whether I'm going to step out onto the street and into an invasion of talking rabbits or something."
"Okay, we can get something to eat, and then maybe we can see about getting you some new clothes. Not that you look bad at all, I don't mean that, and I wouldn't be one to judge anyway, based on how I dress, but all I mean is that you probably need more than one outfit, and maybe you'd want to get some things that helped you ease back into the normal world. If you can call this the normal world. I mean, there aren't talking rabbits here, as far as I know, but there's a whole lot of other weird shit going on."
Is it obvious that he's slightly uncomfortable trying to figure out exactly what she'll need while she's here? It's not like she's just on vacation -- this is where she's going to live, and she'll need somewhere to live and a job and clothes that fit in at least somewhat and... it's all incredibly overwhelming. He has to pause for a moment and shake his head.
"Okay. Food first, dealing with everything else later."
"God, I hadn't even thought about all of that." And she's going to have to do it on Ginsberg's dime, too, because nobody here is going to accept currency printed forty years in the future, and she doesn't exactly have a credit rating. "Just a couple of necessities til I get on my feet. I suppose it's going to be a challenge getting the sort of work I'm used to, isn't it?"
That being the sort of work that even in the twenty-first century, women are still far outnumbered by men.
"Food first," she agrees, putting her arm through his without thinking about it, as much for her reassurance as for his. "And then we'll worry about all the other little things."
He hasn't really thought about the money issue, either, and now he's starting to. He doesn't make a whole lot at SC&P -- for god's sake, he still lives with his father, after all. And that's a whole other concern. Where is she going to live? If he lived on his own, he could bring her home with him and let her stay there, but in the tiny apartment he shares with his dad? Even if his dad were okay with the notion, which he just might be, there's no way he'd subject Tosh to his father. And there's no way he'd be able to deal with the constant teasing and expectant announcements of their impending marriage, or something equally ridiculous. No, he'll have to find somewhere else for her to live.
"It might be. I mean, I've never really looked for jobs in your area of work. But this is New York, there's everything here, we'll find you something. Keep in mind, you've got forty years of technology knowledge on these guys! You can just go into the interview and blow them away with a concept of how to build something they've never even heard of, much less figured out how to make."
The arm linked with his is nice, and it increases his confidence a little as they walk down the street towards his favorite deli. He knows it's not particularly exciting, not the height of fancy New York cuisine, and so he feels compelled to explain himself. "I figured you might want to have the authentic experience of working around here, and a lot of us from work eat here. It's good. Not too expensive. Not that I'd take you somewhere, you know, cheap."
Cheap in terms of expense, maybe, but never cheap as a synonym for inferior. He has more pride than that.
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She bumps his shoulder a little with hers, making a face at his speech about low expectations. Hopefully it's just his low self-esteem talking, and not really an accurate picture of how his coworkers feel about him. Because if that's the case, it might be a little more difficult for her to keep her head down and stay out of trouble. "I don't know the first thing about adverts or how they're made, I doubt anyone will be impressed by that."
Madison Avenue seems very quintessentially New York to her -- busy and crowded, important-looking buildings towering over them. She sticks close to Ginsberg as they make their way toward his office, lest she end up lost and having to check every building on the street to find him again.
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He very likely wouldn't have done that anyway, since half of his coworkers can be downright brutal when it comes to the competition, and the other half wouldn't believe it for a second. It's a lot funnier in his own mind than it would have been in reality.
Pushing open the door to one of the buildings, he holds it for her, and gestures for her to step through into the lobby. Then it's just a few steps to the elevator, which he presses the call button for. Strange, how these movements he'd made every day for so long seem a little odd, now, like he has to get used to them again. He's back here on the exact same day he'd left, but his mind still feels like it's been seven months.
"My agency is on one of the top floors. I mean, I'm calling it my agency like I own the place. The people I work for, how about that."
Conveniently, the elevator sees fit to arrive at that exact moment, sparing him from more babbling.
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She might be able to carry off something like that very briefly, if no one asked her any questions.
"Never know, maybe it will be your agency someday." She steps into the elevator when the doors open, taken aback for a moment by the novelty of an attendant, who politely corrects her when she reaches toward the buttons herself. "Time to learn not to push every button and flip every switch I come across, I suppose."
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The elevator attendant knows where they're going, so he feels free to continue the conversation uninterrupted by pushing any buttons, although he does nod politely to a couple people who step into the elevator after them. It's not clear whether he works with them or whether he just knows them from seeing around the building, but it's obvious that, no matter what he may say, he's capable of being at least somewhat polite and subdued in a work setting.
When they reach the floor that SC&P is located on, he steps out of the elevator, and then pauses for a moment. It all looks the same (of course it does) but it's been so long since he's seen it... He wants to embrace the very walls. He manages not to.
"Okay, I'm just going to grab my stuff from my designated corner of the creative lounge and tell whoever I can find that I'm leaving. They won't mind. You can follow me around, if you want, get a sense of how it all works. I'll tell you right now, though -- the answer's alcohol, usually."
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When they arrive at their destination, Tosh takes a deep breath and falls in behind Ginsberg, her earlier cheer and confidence giving way to the shy uncertainty of a person faced with a completely alien situation. There's no way she won't be sticking to him like his shadow, at least until she gets some kind of feel for her surroundings and how they operate. It almost reminds her of the day she started university.
"Well, most of our work is fueled by pizza and coffee, so I'm not one to judge."
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Her job strikes him as incredibly bizarre, and he's saying that as a guy that's sometimes the only sober one in the office (the incident where everyone had done speed is still very much fresh in his mind; he doesn't think he's ever going to forget just how ridiculously everyone was acting, himself included, and he hadn't even done any drugs.)
"So, uh..."
He leads them down a hallway and into a large room. It's fairly nondescript, except for the fact that every wall is papered with drawings, some of which are intricate and some of which are simply half-finished sketches, photos, words, storyboards, and all manner of ad ideas. It's ridiculously colorful, and his excessively colorful outfit almost seems to fit in, here.
"This is where the magic happens, I guess. For a given value of magic. And that over there--" He gestures to the end of the table, where a bearded man is intently working on sketching something out. "--That's Stan. I'm going to guess he's ignoring me right now, for whatever reason, probably because of something irritating I said, until he realizes that I'm here with a visitor who's new and interesting, and then he'll probably look up and..."
At that moment, Stan looks up from his drawing, and offers the both of them a huge grin. Ginsberg looks at Tosh and shakes his head. "See? What'd I say, that was just a given. Stan, this is Tosh. Tosh, this is Stan."
There's definite affection in his voice, even as he's rolling his eyes.
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She does turn back to face the two men when Ginsberg makes his introduction, with a grin of her own. "Pleased to finally meet you, Stan. Hope we aren't interrupting anything too impossible to recover."
With a half-teasing look, she adds in Ginsberg's direction, "Your workspace is loads nicer than mine."
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"Yeah, it's an okay workplace, except for the pest problem."
He looks meaningfully in Stan's direction as he says it. It's a pretty weak joke, but Stan laughs anyway, and flips him off. For a moment, Ginsberg's so relieved to be back home, in a room with people he actually likes, that he can hardly stand it. Then he remembers himself, and doesn't start any emotional blathering. Instead, he just smiles at Tosh. "Give me just a second," he says, "I've got to tell someone I'm leaving, and then we can go."
With that, he leaves her for a brief moment as he goes off down the hall in search of Peggy. If he knows her, she won't question him leaving, at least, not more than perfunctorily. In the meantime, he figures Tosh has enough to look at with all the sketches on the walls, and maybe a decent conversation, too, if she strikes one up with Stan.
He's back within three minutes, coat and a pile of papers in hand.
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She does laugh at the joke, though, and nods encouragingly when he wants to run off and deal with whoever needs to know that he's taking the rest of the day. Tosh can hold her own with Stan's flirtation, and does indeed manage an enjoyable conversation with him while she waits. It doesn't do anything to solve his dilemma about whether she's dating Ginsberg or not, but she thinks she does all right in convincing him that she's harmless and not-crazy.
"No trouble, then?" Three minutes wouldn't have been nearly enough time back at the Hub, not to navigate everyone's nosy need for details on exactly why she'd be taking off suddenly in the middle of the day. But they're probably all a lot more polite here.
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He gets waved off with a "See you around, asshole" directed at him, although Tosh gets a much more pleasant wave and a "Nice to meet you!" before Stan returns to his storyboarding. Ginsberg briefly wonders what pitch he's working on, and then shakes his head to clear it. Of course, it's the same damn pitch he'd been working on the last time Ginsberg had seen him -- time hasn't passed here, though over six months had passed in the City. That's going to take some getting used to. He'll have to be careful not to slip up and say something that makes it sound like he's been gone for a long time, although even if he does, people'll probably just chalk it up to his inherent oddness.
"Okay," he says, turning back to Tosh, eager look on his face, like he's delighted to have her here (and he really, really is. It's a little embarrassing, in fact.) "What do you want to do first? I mean, do you want to be shown around the city? Do you want to get something to eat? Do you want to... I mean, whatever you want to do, it's up to you."
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"Something to eat sounds perfect. Sort of...ease back into the normal world, you know? I keep catching myself wondering things like why everyone looks so much the same, why I can't hear the clock ticking, whether I'm going to step out onto the street and into an invasion of talking rabbits or something."
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Is it obvious that he's slightly uncomfortable trying to figure out exactly what she'll need while she's here? It's not like she's just on vacation -- this is where she's going to live, and she'll need somewhere to live and a job and clothes that fit in at least somewhat and... it's all incredibly overwhelming. He has to pause for a moment and shake his head.
"Okay. Food first, dealing with everything else later."
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That being the sort of work that even in the twenty-first century, women are still far outnumbered by men.
"Food first," she agrees, putting her arm through his without thinking about it, as much for her reassurance as for his. "And then we'll worry about all the other little things."
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"It might be. I mean, I've never really looked for jobs in your area of work. But this is New York, there's everything here, we'll find you something. Keep in mind, you've got forty years of technology knowledge on these guys! You can just go into the interview and blow them away with a concept of how to build something they've never even heard of, much less figured out how to make."
The arm linked with his is nice, and it increases his confidence a little as they walk down the street towards his favorite deli. He knows it's not particularly exciting, not the height of fancy New York cuisine, and so he feels compelled to explain himself. "I figured you might want to have the authentic experience of working around here, and a lot of us from work eat here. It's good. Not too expensive. Not that I'd take you somewhere, you know, cheap."
Cheap in terms of expense, maybe, but never cheap as a synonym for inferior. He has more pride than that.