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Post by Aaron Clarke on Mar 6, 2013 17:31:21 GMT -6
Aaron looked up in surprise as a guy’s voice shouted ‘A-Man!’ enthusiastically to him in greeting… well he could only assume they were referring to him and he’d already been gifted a nickname. That had to be a good sign, right, accepting his presence enough to give him a not offensive nickname of sorts? He shot a quizzical look down at Hannah as her response to this whole thing was tinged with sarcasm and suspicion – on the whole he was a somewhat naïve person, he considered himself fairly inoffensive and vaguely likeable so… the idea of having enemies on his first day in a new place baffled him, especially given that he’d barely done anything. So he was going to take whatever he was given in the way of friendliness with a big smile and optimism.
“Hannah Banana? That’s cute-” he started to say with a lightly amused and good-natured smile but quickly sobered again as the woman in question seemed to have other ideas about it, “Okay, maybe not,” he joked with a slight laugh as she prodded him in the arm as if to encourage him to go meet everyone else. He looked at the two guys he’d noticed earlier with a friendly smile, “It’s nice to meet you, Jason, Zeke,” he said, politely shaking both their hands in turn and then looking baffled as the former seemed on the defensive with Hannah and then started talking about ‘the Gregson case’ they’d been working on. Huh, so he was just being paranoid earlier when he thought (even if just for a split/egotistical second) they were discussing him. As the older man claimed Hannah ‘kept everyone in check’ he shrugged easily, “Well I don’t see anything wrong with that,” he tried to be diplomatic about the whole thing, “Someone probably should after all. Sometimes we could have used a person to do that back at my old firm, most of us were trainees so…” he trailed off.
Then, turning to Zeke, “Aaanyway, sorry, so how long have you been working here?” he asked curiously.
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Post by Ezekiel Jones on Mar 7, 2013 18:33:13 GMT -6
"Mmmhm," Ezekiel muttered with lips tightly pressed together at Jason's obviously totally reasonable and not in any way insane concern for Hannah. He was mostly joking, but if his prediction turned out to be true, he was pretty sure Little Miss Tightcardigan knew exactly what she was doing (and hey, more power to her). Still, he didn't say anything. He leaned back in his chair as Hannah and Aaron approached, lacing his hands behind his head. "I... actually did break the coffee machine," he offered casually to ease the tension. Zeke respected Jason a lot, and looked up to him as a career model -- Jase had reached new levels of BS-ing his way through life that Zeke could only dream of -- but man, he really did not trust the guy to play it cool right now.
"The Gregson case is airtight, as far as I'm concerned," Zeke continued the cover story seamlessly, "Look, when you put Cullen and Jones on a task, I guess things just get done?" He gave a cocky little grin and shrug to cap it off, before straightening up in his chair and dumping the binder into his desk drawer.
He shuffled the papers on his desk, only stopping briefly to glancing up at Aaron. "Technically since June of '09; that's when I left school. I interned here the two summers before," he explained. Once Zeke decided on a firm, he'd all but forced himself into the job through single-minded schmoozing and networking, and had no intention of remaining a 'trainee' even a second longer than he absolutely had to. Getting practice, building new skills, learning from his elders, blah blah blah... he was ready to take charge and there was a brand new Jaguar with his name on it. "... So, old firm? Which one?" Zeke asked curiously, as if he were making friendly conversation and not gathering every bit of information he could about his competition.
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Post by Aaron Clarke on Mar 8, 2013 12:54:09 GMT -6
((ooc: Loving the Arrested Development quote in Zeke's sig!))
Aaron quickly apologised, “Sorry if I’m keeping you from work,” he added, gesturing vaguely to the papers on Zeke’s desk, “That’s cool though, so you pretty much knew you wanted to work here since 2007? Clear goal focus. I’ll bet Hogwarts wishes everyone who passed through there was like that, it’d make those career advice sessions a lot easier,” he commented lightly. “Sand and Price, up in Manchester. I worked there since January 2008, they’re really good about taking on trainees and giving everyone a chance to get into the legal world. I thought I’d struggle a bit, I mean because I’d graduated Hogwarts in the summer of 2004 and took time off and away from studying, but… they were incredibly understanding and encouraging and it all worked out fine in the end, clearly,” he smiled cheerfully, deliberately looking around the place as if to point out that yep, he felt a bit like he’d nearly made it to the place where he wanted to be, career-wise, providing that he passed his exams he had in a couple of weeks of course! “I’ll dump myself here, yeah?” he checked with well nobody, really, since Mr Holmes had already pointed out his desk to him before he’d left him to explore and meet people and it was pretty obvious which desk had been set up for Aaron considering it was the only empty one in the whole place. It was alongside Zeke’s anyway, it seemed, and he smiled in a friendly manner at the other guy, “Soooo… what’s your story then? Always wanted to be a lawyer? In it for the suits? You just really love talking in Latin?” Aaron asked conversationally as he took his jacket off and dumped his black messenger bag underneath the desk.
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Post by Ezekiel Jones on Mar 8, 2013 17:05:50 GMT -6
(ooc: Yessss! There is an appropriate AD quote for everything. Btw, I'm having trouble writing for Hannah, so can we just assume she was like "JASON, CAN I TALK TO YOU IN THIS CONFERENCE ROOM" or something? )"Yeah, s'pose so," Zeke mumbled noncommittally while striking things from his to-do list. He glanced up to listen as politely as he could manage. "Ha. You a Hufflepuff, man? Just my guess," he chided him in a friendly enough tone. Because really -- 'understanding'? 'Encouraging'? 'Giving everyone a chance'? Everything he said ran almost entirely contrary to Zeke's worldview. "That would appear to be the only empty desk, yes." Zeke almost wished he hadn't volunteered to sacrifice himself, but this was his life now. Trying to make friends with The New Guy. "Ha." He had plenty of reasons for being a lawyer, none of which he really stopped to think about. He liked the challenge; he liked that he could acquire power and prestige for himself purely by being the cleverest person in the room. When his girlfriend's snooty family assumed the worst of him, he liked to see the shocked looks on their faces when he told them he worked for Smythe-Jones, Walker & Holmes. Zeke was pretty sure 'spite' wasn't going to fly with The New Guy, however, so he dug a little deeper. He leaned forward, resting his hand on his knee. "When I was ten, right, I got done for shoplifting. Didn't even do it. It was some rich kid, probably already had everything he wanted. He just wanted to seem 'hard'. But who's going to believe that, right?" He pinched the bridge of his nose and ran his thumb under the frame of his glasses, to really sell it. "Thing is, I knew the truth, and I knew I could prove it, if someone just listened to me. So I worked my arse off for seven years. And now I get paid to have people listen to me. That's my story."
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Post by Aaron Clarke on Mar 8, 2013 17:41:57 GMT -6
((ooc: Lol yes we can, seems like a very Hannah thing to do! Also, YES to Arrested Development quotes being good for everything.))
Aaron couldn’t help but laugh and shook his head, “Gryffindor, actually,” he corrected Zeke, “From the disdain towards Hufflepuff you’re not one yourself… Ravenclaw? No, Slytherin, you must have been,” he guessed lightly. He dug around in his bag to find his notebook and a pen, scribbling down a to-do list of his own for the sake of something vaguely productive to do. He hadn’t been exactly given anything specific to work on today so he assumed this first day was going to be fairly slow unless he made a point of finding something to do. He figured organising stuff was as good as he was going to manage.
He glanced up from the page he’d been concentrating on as Zeke spoke. Aaron fixed him with a curious expression, head tilted slightly to the side as he regarded the other guy for a quiet moment when he’d finished telling ‘his story’. “It’s quite hard to get people to employ you if you’ve been convicted, even if you were young when it happened, let alone be employed by the legal system so…” he noted simply, trailing off. He did know something of that nature – hey, in his defence, he’d never been convicted of anything (which was probably how come Sand and Price hadn’t turned him away at the door), just a pleasant trip to a holding cell every once in a while. Point is, he knew even the slightest whiff of unlawful behaviour didn’t exactly help your case when applying to work anywhere. He tried to keep that on the down-low though. It was a long time ago, after all, he tended to just do the above board side of things now. He chewed the end of his pen thoughtfully before continuing, “… so, either this place is a hell of a lot more understanding than most law firms, which would be surprising given your earlier joke when I said about my old firm being considerate and accepting, orrrrr you’re embellishing somewhat to try to trick the gullible New Guy. Which I get, don’t think I didn’t do the same back in Manchester when we had newbies coming in to join us,” Aaron concluded, writing another item on his to-do list before he grinned slightly sheepishly at Zeke, “Orrrrr, alternative option, I just made a dick of myself…?”
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Post by Ezekiel Jones on Mar 8, 2013 22:01:58 GMT -6
"Got it in two. Somewhere along the line, we stopped churning out Dark Wizards and started sending people here," he said dryly. He didn't entirely subscribe to Slytherin stereotypes (or lawyer stereotypes, for that matter), but he had to admit that some of the same ambition (and slightly callous instinct for self-preservation) that got him sorted there had also put him in this job. He couldn't imagine being happy in any other house.
'Ugh, don't you dare make me bond with you,' Zeke thought to himself, silently refusing to have a laugh about the undoubtedly hilarious shenanigans this goody-two-shoes pulled back in Manchester. So, okay, maybe his first attempts at getting the bleeding-heart Pollyanna on-side hadn't gone exactly as planned. 'Innocent kid from the mean streets of London gets screwed over by bastard cops' was a classic, yeah? It just... hadn't technically happened to him. Pushing it any further would just make things awkward and run counter to his goal of making nice, so Zeke decided to change tack.
Letting out a short burst laughter, he leaned over to give Aaron a light punch on the shoulder, playing it off as friendly banter. Like he passed a test and now they were mates. "Naaaah, it's all good, A-Man! It's just fun to fuck around. You did say you wanted a 'story'," he grinned with a casual shrug. "Look man, nothing personal, but I'm not big on talking about my actual life. Must be the Slytherin in me. You on the other hand, big old Gryffindor Boy Scout... no way you've got anything to hide," Zeke ribbed him lightly, pointing a pen in his direction.
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Post by Aaron Clarke on Mar 9, 2013 15:30:09 GMT -6
“Aaah I see. The image of Voldemort working in a law firm is now burned onto my corneas,” Aaron commented light-heartedly in reply as he settled back in his chair and spun round in it to face Zeke again.
Smiling tightly as Zeke gave him a manly punch to his shoulder, which he assumed was a move towards being friendly if not actually friends, and then nodded, “I did say I wanted a story, true, clearly my fault,” he inclined his head as though acknowledging a hit. “Fair enough, I know a lot of people like that so I don’t think it’s just confined to Slytherin,” Aaron agreed quietly as he scribbled another item down on his to-do list. His look quickly became bemused then at Zeke’s description of him, “I don’t think I’ve ever been described like that before now. Uh... thank you-?” he said uncertainly, then chuckling slightly at this and shaking his head, “If I did have anything to hide, I wouldn’t be very good at it, to be perfectly honest. As a person I’m pretty open,” he shrugged easily.
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Post by Ezekiel Jones on Mar 10, 2013 11:56:19 GMT -6
Zeke wheeled around in his chair, pointing at Jason Cullen's Prada-clothed frame through the glass of the adjacent conference room. "It would look something like that. Minus the spray-tan." With Zeke's deadpan demeanor, it was hard to tell if it was a friendly joke or a snarky jab. He liked Jason, but he was completely willing to throw his buddy-slash-mentor under the bus if necessary. "Anyway. Some of my best mates were Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs." Also some of his dumbest mates, but he didn't say that. Perhaps Rhys Armitage wasn't exactly a representative sample...
Zeke knew the natural, friendly question for him to ask next: So, Aaron, why did you decide to work here? However, he assumed it would be something irritatingly noble and self-righteous and he wasn't sure he could take it. "That's pretty weird, Zero Clarke Thirty. You never thought about playing your cards close to the vest?"
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Post by Aaron Clarke on Mar 10, 2013 14:42:40 GMT -6
“Now that’s just mean to Voldemort’s reputation, surely,” Aaron murmured jokingly but couldn’t help but grin a bit too much at the comparison, glancing over to the conference room where Jason and Hannah seemed to be having a very interesting conversation if their gestures were anything to go by. “I thought you and him were like… ‘partners in crime’ or-” he trailed off, not quite sure how to phrase it, “Or is this Voldemort comparison just ‘friendly banter’ that Jason would approve of?” he asked lightly.
The man laughed then, “Wow. ‘A-Man’, ‘Boy Scout’, and ‘Zero Clarke Thirty’, I’m getting nicknames all over the place here. And nice topical reference,” he remarked in amusement. Then he stopped what he was doing and shrugged his shoulders casually, “Well I mean I obviously don’t share every aspect of my life with everyone around me, there is some stuff that warrants discretion, you know? But on the whole I’m pretty open as a rule. I guess I’ve just never thought of being any other way.” he concluded simply. He might be kidding himself a little bit – it was part of his inability to be particularly self-reflexive – and, though he considered himself an open person, certain topics were stubbornly off limits. Plus he was a surprisingly good liar ‘storyteller’, when he needed to be; after all, he wouldn’t have had that much success in his training thus far if he wasn’t able to talk a good game when he needed to ‘perform’ as it were. He continued to kid himself that it was the morally right decision, really, in the grand scheme of things. "In case you haven't guessed, this makes me a terrible poker player," Aaron joked.
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Jason Cullen
Apprentice
It is clear to all of you that I am awesome
Posts: 134
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Post by Jason Cullen on Mar 11, 2013 11:55:47 GMT -6
“See,” Jason held out his hand as though presenting Zeke to them both, “We just get shit done. It might look as though all I do is drink coffee and dick around on a computer but, actually, we’re just organised. There’s got to be a two-man-tv-sitcom in here somewhere,” he joked lightly, picking up his coffee cup to hide the smile as Zeke began to make nice with the New Guy and ask him about his old firm. Nice, picking up all the info they could collate and use against him later, the guy was good. He caught Hannah’s eye and noticed her less-than-impressed look which, when quickly followed up by a request to talk to him in the conference room, lead him to believe she wasn’t buying the act on his part. Still, this would be fun! He leisurely pushed himself away from where he’d been leaning against Zeke’s desk, every movement as though it were incredibly laborious an ask on Hannah’s part, before he threw back to Zeke and Aaron, “I’ll catch up with you later, Zee. A-Man, welcome aboard,” he inclined his head in a perfectly friendly gesture before slowly following her into the room, bringing his cup with him. He shut the door with a sigh and then turned to her, “So. Why do I feel like you’re going to read the Riot Act to me?” he asked with a cheekily amused grin behind his cup of coffee as he took another sip of the frankly terrible excuse for caffeine. ((ooc: Thought I’d post as Jason, in case you still want to write as Hannah and this helps at all. If it doesn’t, just ignore him and we can assume they’re having a delightful conversation haha! Also, wasn't sure if the whole 'read the Riot Act' thing would be a known idiom so, voila, the Internet helps if not!))
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Post by Ezekiel Jones on Mar 12, 2013 0:28:55 GMT -6
Zeke followed Aaron's line of sight, only just noticing Hannah's slightly ridiculous and oversized chopping hand motions which meant things were Getting Serious. "Oh, you learn to tune out the bickering after awhile. The weird tension. Will they? Won't they? Will someone shoot me in the head?" He was mostly talking out of his arse; he only knew that the two of them spent time together outside of the office and he just liked to assume that everyone was trying to sleep with everyone. It made his life more interesting. "Eh. Doubt he cares. We don't talk much outside of this place, but we work together well, you know? Don't have to talk too much. We're usually just on the same page."
"Try being called Ezekiel, and you'll appreciate the art of the nickname." He picked up a container of half-eaten Chinese food that he'd ordered for lunch and had been grazing on all day (not wanting to get out of his desk), swirling the chopsticks around the last piece of shrimp. "Or, you're hustling me. Three weeks from now, you announce a 'casual' poker game round your flat. The next thing I know, you've cleaned out my bank account, shoes, watch and my girlfriend's diamond earrings," he joked (?). "I think of it like -- I can cover up my tattoos, cut my hair, wear different glasses. And I can filter what I'm willing to tell people, depending on the situation. We're all made up of an infinite number of different versions of ourselves, yeah?" Zeke stopped just short of dipping into his whole 'truth is relative' thing which... tended not to gain him many fans.
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Post by Aaron Clarke on Mar 12, 2013 5:40:36 GMT -6
Aaron quickly checked himself as he realised he’d been looking at Hannah and Jason for too long, his gaze quickly snapping back to Zeke as the other guy spoke, “Bickering, is that what I’m seeing?” he asked in confusion before letting out a slightly forced chuckle as he mentioned their ‘weird tension’. “Hannah and Jason, really? I mean. Just. Isn’t he like old enough to be her dad…?” he asked tentatively, brow furrowed somewhat at the thought of this before he shook his head, “Anyway. I guess I get that. Maybe you two should have a sitcom like he suggested… ‘Suits’-style?” he tried to steer the conversation away from Hannah and Jason and back to more meaningless chatter.
“Fair point,” he inclined his head with a smile as Zeke talked of nicknames, “I guess I was fortunate – unfortunate? I don’t know – with ‘Aaron Clarke’. You can’t really do much with either of those.” Aaron swivelled around in the chair casually, meeting his comment with a laugh, shaking his head, “Believe me, I haven’t got a hustling bone in me. Or my own flat, currently. So… no hustling poker games just yet.” He shrugged easily, his expression inscrutable then, “Besides, it would be snooker or pool, not poker, I hustled you at, if anything.” He spun the pen he held absent-mindedly between his fingers, looking at the other boy curiously as he explained his take on it all, “I can understand that way of thinking, yeah. It’s like; you’re bound to be a slightly different person at work than the one you are when you go home at the end of the day. That’s just part of life. But I like to think there’s still that common inherent ‘you’ at all times. I mean they might be slightly different versions but it’s all of the same person, at their core. You’re not going to go so far in the… ‘role’… that you lose sight of who you are underneath the ‘act’.”
((ooc: I may have randomly wrote a drunken Aaron with his cousin enthusiastically telling Hannah he passed his exams when he catches up with her at a bar Friday night, having been plied with booze by Kyle who wants to see how it all pans out. I figured he makes a fool of himself? Could be interesting if you're up for a bar scene - Jules, Jason, Hannah, Rory maybe, the whole gang? O'Connors?))
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Post by Ezekiel Jones on Mar 15, 2013 17:33:38 GMT -6
(ooc: Sounds fun, I'm down!!)
"I... don't actually know how old he is," Zeke realized while tapping his fingertips on the desk in front of him. "Over forty, you think? Don't tell him I'm 21 and born in the nineties, yeah. You might see an actual vein pop out of that glorious forehead of his."
Holding a chopstick in his teeth, Zeke spun casually in his chair. He didn't mention that he also liked snooker and pool, not sure yet if he was willing to commit to hanging out with this guy outside of the office. Particularly when he might lose at something. The horror. "You can hustle anyone at anything, man. Just transfigure your beer into something non-alcoholic and convince everyone else to get pissed. It's not the most elegant strategy, sure..." he gave a genial laugh at this.
"There's no 'real you', is what I'm saying. Or maybe it's all the 'real you'. Either way." Zeke wasn't one to talk much or expand on his philosophical views, instead opting for slightly cryptic declarations. The point was, he didn't believe in soul-searching or 'finding oneself' or any of that. Maybe it was comforting to think that beneath all the lies you tell yourself, there's some real identity, some immutable truth there. It just seemed unlikely. "You're just meat and nerves attached to a half-decent brain, if you're lucky. Everything else is a construct, yeah?"
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Post by Aaron Clarke on Mar 15, 2013 18:03:25 GMT -6
Aaron looked at Zeke and shrugged, “I don’t know, maybe my brain is exaggerating the age gap somewhat? I have been told I’m awful at gauging people’s ages. Like… is Hannah… early-to-mid-twenties?” he asked uncertainly actually now he really thought about it. She did say this was the fifth year she’d been working for the firm so – he did some quick maths – maybe she wasn’t the age he’d initially assumed. But hey, underestimating a woman’s age wasn’t an offence, right; it was usually the other way round that they got a bit offended at? And there was no need for Hannah to find out, no need at all.
He regarded the other guy suspiciously for a moment, his brow furrowed, and then he nodded sagely, “You’ve done this before; you spoke as a man of experience in just such tried-and-tested technique of hustling,” he commented, pretending to eye Zeke up jokingly, “I’m onto you now though.”
Aaron stopped twirling the pen between his fingers absently as what the other male had said registered properly with him. “You… you really believe that?” he asked uncertainly and then regarded him curiously, “But… there must be something intrinsic,” he reasoned earnestly. “I mean we all, to some extent, have a public image of ourselves that we project but, at the end of the day, when we go home, away from here, away from hanging out with our friends at the pub or whatever… there is a core and immutable ‘you’ underneath it all, a truth that you can’t lose sight of, no matter how much you kid yourself otherwise. Right?” he concluded, but his tone (usually so imbued with conviction, confidence and an intense desire to make others understand his view point, even if they didn’t hold to it themselves) was now laced with hesitation. “Otherwise. It’s quite depressing, really-” he trailed off then and laughed awkwardly.
“Plus, with the ‘everything else is a construct’ path you’ve just taken, this conversation is now drifting to an ontological level that, frankly, I don’t want to embarrass myself by trying to discuss. Metaphysics, not reeeeeally my bag,” he smiled good-naturedly.
((ooc: Excellenté, I'll post it up soon. For some reason I want to take full advantage of the O'Connor's setting by having Bradley full-on hate on Aaron, just because he can... and maybe also because the gang Aaron gets a little karaoke-happy after a few pints and irritatingly can actually sing, ugh what a dick.))
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Post by Ezekiel Jones on Mar 16, 2013 11:04:40 GMT -6
(ooc: Hannah will belt out some Alanis Morissette after a few mixed drinks, but she is decidedly NOT a good singer, ha)
"I think she's been fully qualified for awhile now, so... late-twenties, at the youngest," Zeke said, watching the woman cross her arms sternly on the other side of the glass. "Doesn't seem like that big a gap to me, but... eh, people are weird about age. My girl is exactly two and a half years younger than me, and the way her dad looks at me, you'd think I belong on some sort of government watch list."
"Wait, are you flirting with me?" he asked suddenly as Aaron eyed him up, before giving a genuine knee-slapping laugh at this.
Zeke resisted the urge to really go off on his opinions -- no one else seemed to enjoy a pinch of nihilism with their morning coffee. "Not depressing. Freeing, I think." He picked up his cup from his desk and swirled it around. "Metaphysics is... a bit 'my bag', I suppose. If you count getting caught in late-night Wikipedia spirals." Also stoned conversations, but that was definitely not something he was about to admit to.
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