"Oh Jesus, don't give me a driver's license until I learn how to drive. I mean, a fake birth certificate is one thing, but a fake driver's license might make me to think I should actually be allowed on the road without knowing what I'm doing, and I really don't want to have come to the future just to run people over."
He can already tell he's going to be fascinated by a great deal about the future, but overwhelmed, too. The City had been one thing -- it had technically been the future, but because everyone had been from different places and time, it hadn't always felt that way. Here, though, he feels distinctly out of his time, and if it's noticeable in just the very brief time that he's been here... how much stranger is it going to get before he gets used to it?
The very thought makes him feel slightly nauseous, and he has to sit down on the couch.
"Can I have some water? Or some tea? Or something to stop the whole oh my god I'm in the future I'm going to die feeling?"
"You don't know how to drive?" She shouldn't sound so gleeful, but finally, someone will have to let her do the driving. "We'll teach you and then just get you a license the proper way. Anyway, probably for the best, you know we drive on the left here."
He actually does look a little nauseated, and Tosh rushes to get him a glass of water before putting on the kettle for tea. She gave up on making coffee when Ianto started working at Torchwood. It never tasted right when she made it herself. Besides, she grew up too English not to see tea as a comfort beverage.
"I've never been to the future myself, but I've been into the past. So I know a little bit what you're feeling. But you'll be all right. You're smart and creative, and the world is a lot more accepting of people now. You don't have to care as much about fitting in and being what someone else thinks you ought to be."
When the kettle whistles, she pours two mugs and brings them to the couch, sitting down next to Ginsberg with her arm against his, like she did when they had their talk under the tree back in the City.
"Well, I mean, I never really had any reason to drive when I was back home. I just took the subway everywhere, and it wasn't like we could afford a car, anyway. I always meant to learn, but then I ended up in the City, and then I ended up here, and..."
He shrugs, and gives her a half-hearted little smile in thanks for the water. It helps steady him a little, lets him hold out long enough to wait for the tea and to listen to what she's saying about him being all right. He'd like to believe it. He's pretty sure she wouldn't deliberately mislead him. Maybe she knows something he doesn't.
"So everything you said about the future being more accepting was actually true, and not just some stuff you were telling me so that I didn't despair that the world would be shitty forever?"
Her presence here on the couch is comforting, and he knows the tea will be, too. This might not all be so bad.
"I can teach you. There are lots of places to practice, and cars these days practically drive themselves."
She takes a sip of her tea as a way of encouraging him to do the same, and nods, smiling. "Promise. It's not perfect, I mean there are plenty of problems still, and it's not like everyone loves and accepts everyone else. But on the whole, things have gotten a lot better. Not just about sexuality, but about gender equality and civil rights... There's always more improvement to be made, and there are ways that the world is still sort of shitty. But yeah. It's better."
He follows suit, taking a sip of the tea, and seeming to relax slightly more. He's nervous, and he can't help it -- new situations make him nervous in general (he'd been a wreck when he'd first arrived in the City) and new situations that're this big and this potentially life-changing are even scarier. Anxiety always manages to rear its ugly head, and he's grateful that he doesn't have to explain that to Tosh, because she's seen him in pretty bad mental states before, and never given him grief for it, not the way so many other people do.
"Well, there're problems everywhere you go, I guess. I'd just like to believe that this is the kind of place I can be myself. I mean, within reason. I was myself back home, too, and I guess I was myself in the City, but there're different kinds of ways of being yourself, if that makes any sense at all. Does that sound totally crazy? It might. I don't want to make a fool of myself here or anything, I'd just like to stop worrying so much about what people're going to think of me."
It's a fresh start, in a way. It's also yet another chance to get rejected by the world as a whole.
"Can't promise there won't be people who react poorly to you being yourself, but there are always people like that. This is a good time to be the creative sort, or the intellectual sort, though. And a good time to just be the kind of person who isn't like anyone else you'll meet."
All the reassurances in the world aren't going to convince him until he experiences it for himself, she knows, but she wants him to at least feel comfortable trying to make a go of it. (She also bets that a few days immersing himself in popular culture will prove that there are plenty of people out there bucking convention a lot harder than Ginsberg is likely to do.)
"You know, I haven't had a real vacation in ages. I think I deserve one, considering I just crammed months of time in an alternate dimension into what everyone here is going to think is an afternoon at the cinema. Think I'll take a few days, and give you the grand tour of Cardiff. Sound like fun? Could even pop iver to London if you wanted."
"Yeah, well, some people are just assholes, wherever you go. That's human nature, and it's weirdly reassuring to know that it never changes."
Forty years in the future or forty years in the past, he's pretty sure he'd run into a lot of people who didn't like him being himself. 'Himself' is pretty blunt, at the best of times, and downright abrasive and irritating at the worst of times. Frankly, he's amazed that Tosh has been able to put up with him for this long, and that niggling sense of doubt comes back into his mind once again -- now that they're here, maybe she'll realize that he's not worth the effort or the time, and leave him stranded in a place he doesn't know or understand.
Her next suggestion, though, has him smiling again, vacillating right back to happy and eager. "Yeah, I'd like that. That sounds like a lot of fun. I haven't gone on vacation in forever. Actually, maybe I haven't gone on vacation in ever, unless you count the City, which I don't really."
"Last holiday I tried to take wound up with me and Jack stuck in 1941. I'm sort of looking forward something a little more normal."
Now that they're in Wales again, Ginsberg isn't going to be able to avoid the residual weirdness that comes with being friends with a Torchwood employee. Especially one who has a hard time keeping those kinds of things to herself when there's a friendly ear around to share them with.
"Maybe we can hunt up some videos of older films too, so I can get a better sense of exactly how much I'm going to need to prepare you for. But at least you've already got a head start on the technology, being in the City, right?"
"Yeah, I'd kind of like to avoid time traveling again, so soon after all of this. Especially not to 1941. Especially not getting stuck there. No thanks."
He's pretty sure he's content to stay here in the future for awhile. Or, possibly, forever, since he's not sure Tosh and her team of apparently mad scientists (at least, that's what they sound like to him) can put him back where he belongs. And besides, he's here now, and he's going to make the most of it. This whole vacation thing even sounds like fun. Will wonders never cease?
"Sure, I learned some stuff about technology. I learned that if you drop your phone in the bathtub, sometimes it doesn't work anymore. And I learned that you don't put aluminum foil in the microwave because it lights the microwave on fire. And I learned that there's something called the internet and then I stopped listening."
"That's that, then. The only traveling we'll do is by car or train, and absolutely no going backward or forward in time."
Not that they could actually do anything to prevent it, but Tosh figures that the likelihood increases dramatically with proximity to Jack and/or the Rift. Keep Ginsberg away from both for a while, and they should be able to get in a few days of pretending the world is entirely dull and normal.
She shakes her head at the sketchy understanding he demonstrates of 'modern' tech. "If you drop your phone in water, just put it in a jar of rice. That'll pull the moisture right out. Assuming you didn't leave it at the bottom of the ocean for a month or something. And everyone puts foil in the microwave at one time or another. It's sort of beautiful how the sparks jump and arc." The mischievous expression on her face does nothing to indicate whether she's joking or serious about that part. "You're definitely going to want to learn to use the internet, though. But we'll take it all slow, I promise. Baby steps."
"Baby steps sound great. Necessary, in fact, unless you want my brain to explode."
He's only semi-joking, but of course, he's always had a very dramatic way of speaking. Why be subdued when he can make everything sound exciting? It's part of the reason he's always been so good at advertising. He really hopes he can keep doing that here, both because he truly loves it, and because it's the only thing he knows how to do. If he has to get an entirely new career on top of learning everything else... that thought is overwhelming, too. He takes another sip of tea.
"Okay, next time I drop my phone in water, I'll do that. Because I'm almost certainly going to. And I might just want to avoid the microwave in general, until I get a better handle on how it works. And I trust you to teach me to use the internet without, I don't know, falling into a black hole of modern technology and never coming out."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
He can already tell he's going to be fascinated by a great deal about the future, but overwhelmed, too. The City had been one thing -- it had technically been the future, but because everyone had been from different places and time, it hadn't always felt that way. Here, though, he feels distinctly out of his time, and if it's noticeable in just the very brief time that he's been here... how much stranger is it going to get before he gets used to it?
The very thought makes him feel slightly nauseous, and he has to sit down on the couch.
"Can I have some water? Or some tea? Or something to stop the whole oh my god I'm in the future I'm going to die feeling?"
no subject
He actually does look a little nauseated, and Tosh rushes to get him a glass of water before putting on the kettle for tea. She gave up on making coffee when Ianto started working at Torchwood. It never tasted right when she made it herself. Besides, she grew up too English not to see tea as a comfort beverage.
"I've never been to the future myself, but I've been into the past. So I know a little bit what you're feeling. But you'll be all right. You're smart and creative, and the world is a lot more accepting of people now. You don't have to care as much about fitting in and being what someone else thinks you ought to be."
When the kettle whistles, she pours two mugs and brings them to the couch, sitting down next to Ginsberg with her arm against his, like she did when they had their talk under the tree back in the City.
no subject
He shrugs, and gives her a half-hearted little smile in thanks for the water. It helps steady him a little, lets him hold out long enough to wait for the tea and to listen to what she's saying about him being all right. He'd like to believe it. He's pretty sure she wouldn't deliberately mislead him. Maybe she knows something he doesn't.
"So everything you said about the future being more accepting was actually true, and not just some stuff you were telling me so that I didn't despair that the world would be shitty forever?"
Her presence here on the couch is comforting, and he knows the tea will be, too. This might not all be so bad.
no subject
She takes a sip of her tea as a way of encouraging him to do the same, and nods, smiling. "Promise. It's not perfect, I mean there are plenty of problems still, and it's not like everyone loves and accepts everyone else. But on the whole, things have gotten a lot better. Not just about sexuality, but about gender equality and civil rights... There's always more improvement to be made, and there are ways that the world is still sort of shitty. But yeah. It's better."
no subject
"Well, there're problems everywhere you go, I guess. I'd just like to believe that this is the kind of place I can be myself. I mean, within reason. I was myself back home, too, and I guess I was myself in the City, but there're different kinds of ways of being yourself, if that makes any sense at all. Does that sound totally crazy? It might. I don't want to make a fool of myself here or anything, I'd just like to stop worrying so much about what people're going to think of me."
It's a fresh start, in a way. It's also yet another chance to get rejected by the world as a whole.
no subject
All the reassurances in the world aren't going to convince him until he experiences it for himself, she knows, but she wants him to at least feel comfortable trying to make a go of it. (She also bets that a few days immersing himself in popular culture will prove that there are plenty of people out there bucking convention a lot harder than Ginsberg is likely to do.)
"You know, I haven't had a real vacation in ages. I think I deserve one, considering I just crammed months of time in an alternate dimension into what everyone here is going to think is an afternoon at the cinema. Think I'll take a few days, and give you the grand tour of Cardiff. Sound like fun? Could even pop iver to London if you wanted."
no subject
Forty years in the future or forty years in the past, he's pretty sure he'd run into a lot of people who didn't like him being himself. 'Himself' is pretty blunt, at the best of times, and downright abrasive and irritating at the worst of times. Frankly, he's amazed that Tosh has been able to put up with him for this long, and that niggling sense of doubt comes back into his mind once again -- now that they're here, maybe she'll realize that he's not worth the effort or the time, and leave him stranded in a place he doesn't know or understand.
Her next suggestion, though, has him smiling again, vacillating right back to happy and eager. "Yeah, I'd like that. That sounds like a lot of fun. I haven't gone on vacation in forever. Actually, maybe I haven't gone on vacation in ever, unless you count the City, which I don't really."
no subject
Now that they're in Wales again, Ginsberg isn't going to be able to avoid the residual weirdness that comes with being friends with a Torchwood employee. Especially one who has a hard time keeping those kinds of things to herself when there's a friendly ear around to share them with.
"Maybe we can hunt up some videos of older films too, so I can get a better sense of exactly how much I'm going to need to prepare you for. But at least you've already got a head start on the technology, being in the City, right?"
no subject
He's pretty sure he's content to stay here in the future for awhile. Or, possibly, forever, since he's not sure Tosh and her team of apparently mad scientists (at least, that's what they sound like to him) can put him back where he belongs. And besides, he's here now, and he's going to make the most of it. This whole vacation thing even sounds like fun. Will wonders never cease?
"Sure, I learned some stuff about technology. I learned that if you drop your phone in the bathtub, sometimes it doesn't work anymore. And I learned that you don't put aluminum foil in the microwave because it lights the microwave on fire. And I learned that there's something called the internet and then I stopped listening."
no subject
Not that they could actually do anything to prevent it, but Tosh figures that the likelihood increases dramatically with proximity to Jack and/or the Rift. Keep Ginsberg away from both for a while, and they should be able to get in a few days of pretending the world is entirely dull and normal.
She shakes her head at the sketchy understanding he demonstrates of 'modern' tech. "If you drop your phone in water, just put it in a jar of rice. That'll pull the moisture right out. Assuming you didn't leave it at the bottom of the ocean for a month or something. And everyone puts foil in the microwave at one time or another. It's sort of beautiful how the sparks jump and arc." The mischievous expression on her face does nothing to indicate whether she's joking or serious about that part. "You're definitely going to want to learn to use the internet, though. But we'll take it all slow, I promise. Baby steps."
no subject
He's only semi-joking, but of course, he's always had a very dramatic way of speaking. Why be subdued when he can make everything sound exciting? It's part of the reason he's always been so good at advertising. He really hopes he can keep doing that here, both because he truly loves it, and because it's the only thing he knows how to do. If he has to get an entirely new career on top of learning everything else... that thought is overwhelming, too. He takes another sip of tea.
"Okay, next time I drop my phone in water, I'll do that. Because I'm almost certainly going to. And I might just want to avoid the microwave in general, until I get a better handle on how it works. And I trust you to teach me to use the internet without, I don't know, falling into a black hole of modern technology and never coming out."