skeletonkeay

Hey, Gerry, there's a corpse slipping in the front door and glancing around to see if you're available. As you do.

Gerry's just standing at his desk, cranking a book-binding press tight. He looks up when the bell on the door jingles.

"Hey! Fire guy! Welcome back. Shop's not even on fire this time," he jokes. "What can I do for you?"

"I was looking to, um. Buy a journal. Or a notebook. Something nice. As a...a present?" He's not sure how he feels about being called 'fire guy', ducking his head a little, glancing around the shop instead of at Gerry. Because being known for that, specifically, feels weird.

Especially now that he's only on the fire brigade on a volunteer basis.

In fairness to Gerry, he didn't actually get a chance to learn anything else about Angel except that he can do the fire thing.

"Yeah, sure. I've got a stock of 'em on those shelves by the window if you want a premade one, or we can talk shop if you have an idea for a custom."

"Maybe a custom. It's an offering to a goddess, that seems like something you get special. Right?"

Not that Mr. Touched By The Eye is going to have feelings, hearing that, right?

If he has them, he doesn't voice them, content to simply raise a brow and then decide it's not really any of his business. This guy literally bleeds Terminus into the air like ink in water. Even Oliver Banks would be impressed. So if Angel made a connection to (ostensibly) Mortanne, there'd be no sense in being surprised.

"People who are invested in that sort of thing tend to go the whole nine, yeah. So, if you want a leather cover, I can engrave or emboss nearly anything into the front, as well as press in stones or metal embellishments. I can also do both lined and unlined paper."

“Yes. Black leather cover, definitely. And her symbols. Perhaps a horse drawing a carriage through snow? Or if that’s too intricate, just a really nice horse.”

Angel flashes a smile. “I plan to leave it in the temple. For people to write to her in. Especially those of us here who don’t know how to pray in the local manner. I think…she’ll like being called on. In this way. The other goddesses might too, but her especially.”

Losing control of his amassed notes isn't a problem when he can put it all onto a single device, but here, that isn't an option. He'd heard about Pinhole Printing in passing while working on preparations for work at the clinic, and now he's waiting politely at the front of the store, looking around with open curiosity as he holds his notebook and myriad hand-penned pages that, at least for the moment, are loose under the cover as he uses the book as something of a folder to keep it all from escaping him again.

If there is a bell, it will be tentatively 'ding'ed.

Edited 2023-11-26 19:56 (UTC)

To make a budget, one must know how much one wishes to spend. Tarantulas's memory is good, but even Cybertronians know better than to rely solely on their own minds for sensitive data, and he does not wish to overextend his trust towards his new, mostly-organic brain. So, the print shop: he's here to window shop, and price-check the blank journals. One hopes they are of a decent quality.

Tarantulas himself is wearing his humanoid body, extra legs tucked decently under his coat. No covering up his six extra eyes, though; they survey the showroom calmly, as he decides where to start looking first.

There is, indeed, a bell, but it's on the door. Otherwise Gerry wouldn't be able to hear people come in over the printing press when it's running. So when it jingles, he looks up quickly.

"H'llo." Gerry gives a short nod. "Need anything in particular or are you just browsing today?"

"Actually, I have something of an odd request," Bart replies a touch bashfully. "I'd heard that you do book binding here, and wanted to know if you might be able to teach me. It's just, this isn't the most stable way to keep my work." He lifts the book crammed with notes for Gerry to see. "I can pay you for your time of course."

The bell attached to Gerry's door jingles loudly, and he looks up from where he was working. He has a book tightly clamped in a wooden apparatus and is running an odd-looking blade over the top. There are shreds of paper littering his work station in little white coiling ribbons.

The minute he lays eyes on Tarantulas, though, he can see exactly what's up. Not only does the spider body fail to escape his notice, he can see the marks all over this guy. Ironically the most prominent among them is the Spiral.

Oh hell no. Nope. Absolutely not.

In an act of blatant defiance and incredible rudeness, Gerry shakes his head and goes back to trimming the edges of his book. He wasn't going to turn away a client, but no way in hell was he giving his barely-passable customer service to some wackadoo who was in here spidering up the place.

Gerry's brows raise. No, that certainly wasn't the most efficient way to keep notes.

"I wouldn't mind, but book binding requires a gaggle of expensive equipment. For me, it came with the job, but for you I don't imagine that'd be the case. I'd be happy to bind all that for you, if you like. Might be simpler."

Well! That's not very friendly, now is it? It's not as though Tarantulas expected the shopkeeper to follow him around making small talk -- in fact he'd prefer it they stayed quiet and out of the way until he has a question, like the chatbots you'd see attached the digital storefronts on Cybertron's datanet. Ah, he misses online shopping. But to be dismissed so suddenly, before he's said a single word...that's annoying.

Luckily Tarantulas has almost no sense of shame. He merely sniffs disapprovingly and goes about his business, studying the wares on offer until he discovers...a discrepancy.

In his left hand, a blank journal with white pages, bound in leather with the silhouette of a horse worked on the cover. In his right hand, a blank journal with white pages, bound in leather with the silhouette of several birds in flight on the cover. Nearly identical apart from their chosen motif, but the horse-journal costs nearly twice as much. Why?

"Excuse me," he says, not exactly impolitely but very firmly as he approaches the counter. "Can you tell me about these books? Why is one more expensive than the other?" And don't even think about trying to ignore him now, fleshsack.

Bart's expression falls some. "Oh dear...that was what I was afraid of. I have a bit of cash but certainly not enough to buy a lot of expensive equipment. If you wouldn't mind, I would greatly appreciate your help with this."

He moves forward to place the book down on the counter for Gerry to have a better look at, trying to straighten out the loose pages a bit better. "Everything is at least in its proper order, including an index mostly for my own reference." He really doubts that anyone else is as interested in the contents of his notes as he is, after all.

"Yeah, I gotcha covered. Maybe at some point I can teach you to use this stuff and you can borrow it when I'm closed. I don't work on Tuesdays." Because fuck Tuesday, honestly. Gerry straightens up the papers. "You want me to trim 'em so they're uniform or no? Shouldn't be any text coming off unless you wrote real close to the edges."

Oh, bloody fantastic.

He stifles a sigh. "Sturdier paper. One's made of recycled fabric, the other is standard wood pulp. The fabric paper is stronger. Also harder to come by. Higher quality, scarcer materials, higher price. Make sense?"

To illustrate his point, he passes Tarantulas two sheets of paper. "You can get a better look, if you like. Try tearing them. See the difference."

He still doesn't really want to talk to this Spiral-and-Web-addled nightmare. But he has pride in his work.

Bart does brighten up at the offer to teach him when the timing is better. He nods, then looks back to the notebook and its ill-fitting pages here and there.

"If you can without damaging any of the writing, then I don't see why not. It would be nice to have a uniform volume. Oh, I should ask how much you charge for this sort of service-" he pauses to fish about his person, to find his personal allotment of brass that he only tends to keep part of on him while out.

Gerry notices the pause and waves a hand. "It's cool, we can worry 'bout that later. You got a specific design you're after?"

Bart straightens back up, obviously taken aback by the offer. He smiles brightly, nodding in his thanks for the consideration.

"I think simple would be best. Depending on the cover you might opt for, simple moldings, perhaps a stamp bearing my name so that if I somehow misplace it someone would know who it belongs to? I don't know if there's an appropriate method for adding pages between the existing ones later unfortunately, and I would hate to inadvertently damage it after the fact, so once they're bound I'll likely need to start another volume..."

A stern talking-to from a friend and a slap from the Christmas Devil is enough to finally get Jon's miserable arse in gear.

Yes, he knows, fuck Tuesday, but that's the day he picks, nonetheless. He didn't want to interrupt any business-as-usual or leave a workday tense, and it was partially because he wasn't too keen to wait around any longer.

Here goes nothing?

Knocking on the back-door, he waits patiently, trying to keep his words collected as he waited. And the second Gerry answers, he loses about half those mental notes. Oh well.

"Hello, Gerry. ...Is now a good time to chat?"

"Nah, there's a lot of glue and sewing involved. I'll add some blanks in at the end to tide you over while I make the next one," Gerry assures him. "What's your name, then?"

Gerry snorts from behind the partially opened door, trying to keep out the cold. But he opens it further to let Jon in.

"'Bout time you showed up. Well hurry up and get in."

"Blanks seem like the best course of action," he agrees, satisfied with that idea. "Bart Torgal. I've been assuming that you would happen to be Gerard Keay?" He'd been pointed here when he'd asked around for help getting his notes bound and heard Gerry mentioned by name, after all.

"I know, I know. Right when we'd spoken last, I was due for a voyage, and only got back in the other day."

He doesn't have to be told twice to shuffle inside, closing the door behind him. The home is cozy, and, admittedly, neater than Jon would've expected. He doesn't remark on that, of course.

"Lovely home you've got here," He remarks in a sad attempt at small-talk, before getting into the actual reason for the visit. "...I'd like to, ah. Start us off here with this overdue talk by... saying that I'm very sorry for the way I acted, during the incident."

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A visit to his shop

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Early in the morning, at the shop

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This tag got lost in the sauce, I had no idea it was here until now and you have my endless apologie

DW has been going through it lately tbh, I don't blame you

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Apologies, for Losing my Cooling

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Re: Apologies, for Losing my Cooling

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