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SKELETON / DOSSIER (ATTACHED) / PINTEREST / PLOTS

> task directory: arrival. introduction. first impressions.

It shouldn't have been this hard to find Seth's door, Rohan had only just been there last night, and yet his idiot compass proved way off, needle spinning senselessly around the rooftop terrace and nearly the sauna before he managed to right course.

All for the best. It would have been too mortifying for words, if not mortally dangerous, had Rohan kicked the door open and flopped face down onto someone else's bed, a groan into the pillow by way of greeting.

"We're so fucked." Rohan's face is still mouth-deep in pillow, and he doesn't actually know where Seth is, spatially speaking, in the room — god knows mentally, too, Ro's so off kilter in his own right — so he props up onto an elbow, side-long, and tries again.

"We're so fucked, dude. We're so, so massively out of our goddamned fucking depth — I don't even know. That analogy was supposed to go somewhere. Fuck."

He goes pillow-side for one more emphatic, "FUUUUUCK," entirely for his own benefit. Attempt at catharsis, maybe. Rohan recalls a paper, once, or maybe a PopSci article when he still read for fun on the positive correlation between cursing and pain tolerance. Feels about fucking right.

52 PICKUP.

Genial. Unassuming. Warm. The kind of professor, colleague, cohort-mate, or, god, even TA Rohan would've chewed up his own nails to have just about anywhere in his own academic career. It's exceptionally easy to take them at face value. He sits further back into his chair – slouches into it, really, if we must be technical about these things — and circles a foot around Seth's ankle beside him. Leans in, drops his voice low just for him. "Containment. Your guy."

DYING BREED.

Rohan fought the urge to shrivel under Dying Breed's tracking gaze. Head shot, photographer be damned. He hadn't offered a name beyond the call sign, Rohan realized belatedly with the door swinging shut behind him. All the better for it, maybe, though Rohan wasn't about to find any excuses to ask for one. He endures a beat of the following silence before its altogether too much and leans in to Seth. "Even more intense."

ELEVATOR MUSIC.

Rohan firmly ignores the way his stomach turns around the shape of his breakfast sitting stone-heavy — protein bar in the Seth style, Kirkland's worst — on the mention of all things gun wounds and head shots. And gun shots. And head wounds. Passing his hand over his mouth, he throws Seth's way, "so many wonderful things to look forward to." And, when he's sure no one else hears it, finishes with, "maybe even a free haircut to complement the new scars."

HIGH FIDELITY.

Rohan's heart is hammering in his chest and his voice drops to just above a rasp in compensation. That's not — there's no — He doesn't take his eyes off Dr. Wilson. Steve. He only shoots back with a particularly sharp kick to Seth's ankle. "Oh, fuck off. You can't even name a single one of his papers." He doesn't catch the far edge of Seth's meaning until a beat after, but by then surely no one is looking at Rohan and the flush creeping high in his cheeks.

LIVE WIRE.

Someone else lacking in love for their assigned call sign. Thank god. Though, judging by the ... everything about her, Atalanta's reasons diverge significantly from Rohan's. Twenty years, Jesus. Rohan bites at a gnarled cuticle of his thumb and makes a note to, in fact, not need her to the best of his ability. It's only polite. For only Seth's benefit beside him, Rohan drops under his breath a short and low, almost coughed out, "intense."

NO.2 PENCIL.

Some ghosts don't know they're ghosts. Others, maybe, are the only ones who really know what they are; what's happened to them. If this is the thought Rohan holds in his mind as his gaze slides over Michelle, thin and short-lived, he can't parse it. He says nothing.

OLD SPORT.

Rohan is — unsettled, to say the least. It feels unfair to say aloud, so he'll simply think it: Old Sport's introduction does not pass the Turing test. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. There's an imposter among us. It's almost funny, but not nearly as knife-sharp and arrow-accurate as whatever Seth's about to tell him. Rohan can see him leaning in, and — "Stupid," he mutters with a barely held smile behind his worried-raw cuticle.

PERFECT STRANGER.

Rohan hides an almost-snicker and a not-quite-smirk behind a mostly-bitten cuticle. God damn. Okay. He can fuck with Terry, or at least the energy Terry is bringing to this block of cement, if Terry chooses not to fuck with Rohan back. Which. Understandable, to be entirely honest. For Seth's ears only, Rohan, voice light with laughter he's largely swallowed, drops a low, "I think I'm in love with them."

QUOTE UNQUOTE.

Hitting a little too close to home there, and Loch doesn't even know it. Rohan, for his part, sits down on any untoward reaction until at most he can be described as shuffling in his seat, raising an eyebrow, and suffering from a minor elevation in blood pressure. To Seth beside him, a mumbled, "can't believe we lost the cannibalistic pet gambit already."

URBAN MYTH.

Following immediately after Seth.

It’s widely considered bad form to start one's story with their protagonist waking. So let us begin, then, what is most assuredly not a story – something quite smaller and grander in scale – with most assuredly not our protagonist – lacking categorically across the board – with, of our own forthright admission, an interlude on morning routines and the spiraling outwards of them.

Like most mornings, Rohan rises with the bile-bitter tongued feeling that he’s already late for something important.

Unlike most mornings, he does so in a bed his body does not recognize and without the usual sunlight streaming across his face. The sky, from what Rohan can see of it, sits lower here than in Arizona, a singular grey plane through which it feels little can escape between. What light does is equally low and flat, casting the as-yet-unfamiliar room in unflattering shades of, well, more grey. Rohan reaches semi-blindly for the bedside lamp for what little it'll help, his face still half-pressed to the pillow and — a protein bar.

He hadn't dreamed it, then. Seth had been here. The silver, crinkling assault of Kirkland's Worst nestled in the indent only just previously occupied by Rohan's head enough to rematerialize — something of the morning. God fuck, what time was it?

Rohan swings his legs over the side of the bed. It's cold. Of course it's cold, it's February, and for most of Rohan's life February has meant fucking cold. But Arizona, clearly, has made him soft. Cold-blooded, in need of a large, smooth rock to stretch out on for a few more hours. Missing the same sun he had complained so thoroughly about for so much of the year. Maybe he should think about investing in a sun lamp; any chance Amazon will still honor a two-day delivery?

...

When Rohan does arrive at the right room, it's under frankly more layers than he has any business wearing and would be embarrassed by in nearly any other circumstance. And he still feels cold — though, if we're to be entirely honest, as much as Rohan is ignorant to it beyond wishing he'd worn another jacket, it likely has more to do with the freezing waves rolling off the rest of the team than any real change in air temperature.

Rohan, for his part, started practically vibrating the second he so much as stepped foot in the building. To say he's operating on a different wavelength than many of his coworkers might be, perhaps, an understatement. He enters brightly, bristling with awareness of each pair of eyes that swivel towards him. This, at least, is in some way familiar. Orientation; a round table of stiff-mouthed and too-rehearsed introductions, even if Rohan is the only one leaking genuine excitement and anxiety on making a good first impression out of every pore.

If there is any hesitation in Rohan's step, it's not in taking his seat. That's easy. He slides into the space held for him, Seth's bag deposited gently on the back of his chair and Rohan's slung the same. A matching pair. He gives Seth a gentle tap on the ankle to say what he needs to and won't in the presence of strangers. Hi. Good morning. Thank you. Don't look at me like that. Pay attention.

Beyond that, Rohan is by all accounts well-behaved and characteristically himself. He does not take notes, does not cross his arms and avert his gaze. Rohan sits forward in his seat, chin propped in hand, making as much direct eye contact with each speaker as they'll allow. In the space between he leans back, settles beside Seth, and allows himself the brief vice of workplace gossip with his best friend.

When his turn comes around, by virtue of it just having been Seth's, Rohan slides again to the very edge of his chair, elbows planted on his knees, and gives a half wave.

"Hi, all," he starts with a smile, trying and failing to meet the eye of everyone left in the room through it. "I'm Rohan. Just Rohan, please. Dr. Abbasi if you feel especially professionally compelled, but really I'd prefer if we kept things more casual and friendly, seeing as it looks like we're going to be spending some serious time together. You're welcome to call me Tree Hugger, if that feels right to you, but you might have to say it a few times to get my attention."

He tries for a self-deprecating smile, drops it, and tries again with something a little more honest and open.

"With that said, please forgive me if I'm slow on the uptake when it comes to call-signs. I'm in my seventh year at the Foundation, but it's all been on the research side of things. Lab work, mostly. I'd be more than happy to go into details with anyone who's interested, as Seth knows I can go on all day about it and then some, but I'll spare you all the gory parts and give you the rundown: I'm a neuroscientist and pharmacology guy by training with a more recent focus on amnestic applications in animal and humanoid SCP recovery. I definitely consider myself a pretty active participant in the Foundation's scientific community. One of my long-term goals that I've had — pretty much since I started here has been to incorporate academic and modern medical research principals into what we do. It's something I bring to work with me every day and I'm more than excited for the opportunity to continue bringing it but on a much larger scale and alongside all of you.