There is literally no one I don't hate right now.

[notplaying]

Toby was in the council office. He had the door propped open with stack of his least favorite books, and numerous stacks of paper neatly set out in equal intervals around the table with chairs in front of each. He was at what he counted as being the fifth one. The order was: Council Parameters, Grievances of Property, Grievances of Person,

Comments

[playingtheenemy]

Ainsley heard the bouncing and it was starting to give her an oppressive headache, so much so that she went to see just what in all of God's good acts was going on. When she found it, she managed a terse smile and a grit of her teeth. "Toby," she exhaled.

[notplaying]

He glanced over.

"Ainsley," he returned. "You look particularly at ease this fine balmy morning."

[playingtheenemy]

"I am particularly at ease and full of vim and vigor and a terrible headache this particular morning," she concurred, eyeing the ball with something of a glare. "Is there a reason that you're intending to share the joy of migraines to anyone nearby?"

[notplaying]

He caught the ball.

"It's how I think," he said, then gestured to the spread. "Vim and vigor? I haven't heard of anyone being full of vim and vigor since 1958."

[dogbitesman]

"I do like an open door," William said, stepping carefully around the books propping it open and peering at the piles of paper on the desk. "Good morning, councillor."

[notplaying]

"Good morning, editor," Toby returned, not ceasing the ball throwing, but, and this was a good step with Toby and the press, not aiming it at William, either.

"How goes the next edition?"

[dogbitesman]

"It's coming along," William said, stepping closer to the table and picking up the first page of Council Parameters on the basis that if he wasn't allowed to read it he'd be told to stop and probably would get a fair sense for what was on this page (and the one beneath it as he put it down) anyway. "Things happen, I write them down, I set them in type. Same as at home, there's just less to write. How go the laws?"

[notplaying]

"They go," Toby said, landing the ball against he wall with a particularly hard thok! before catching it back and sighing, leaning back in his chair.

"With varying degrees of success and dispute. So, like normal, really."

[abbysciuto]

Abby had been trying to work, but the consistent thud of a rubber ball bouncing against the shared wall between the lab and the council office was more than a little distracting.

She put down her pen and walked over to the door, then stuck her head in.

"If you're gonna do that, could you at least get a consistent rhythm to it? Right now it's like some avant-garde performance piece and I keep expecting someone to start talking about their spleen or something," she explained.

[notplaying]

"I don't actually know anything about my spleen," Toby said, catching the ball and turning it over in his hands, "but if I did, I would do my best to meet your expectations."

[abbysciuto]

"Well, that's very nice of you. And by the way, your spleen is a highly useful organ, but that's not really important," she shrugged, then looked at the books propping the door open

"Ugh, law books. You know, they all look exactly the same. I think it's so lawyers can take their pictures in front of their bookshelves and look all learned. If you used a normal academic text, someone would be wondering why there was a gigantic nucleus just behind the guy's ear."

[notplaying]

"One of those is actually Dan Brown's Angels and Demons in hardcover. It's the one stuck," he pointed, "in the doorjam." He cleared his throat a little.

"Did I interrupt your work?" he asked. If he had, he'd be impressed, because it would mean she was working on something. Stupid island.

[handandahalf]

Jon heard the rhythmic thumping noise coming from the Council office and paused, puzzled. Sticking his head in the door, he saw the older man tossing the ball against the wall with a look of intense concentration on his face. "Does it help?" he inquired with a bit of a rueful smile on his face.

[notplaying]

"Yes," said Toby, not stopping, but glancing over at the young man, "I think. I've been doing it for about twenty years, so I assume it helps. It's conceivable it doesn't and I just think it does."

[handandahalf]

"Habits can be like that," Jon agreed. He had a fair few of his own that, by now, he couldn't quite remember why he had started them in the first place. "What are you working on? If you don't mind my asking," he added with that smile again.

[notplaying]

"Of course not," Toby said, sitting back, turning the ball over in his hands.

"Sit, if you like. Ah, law. Laws," he specified, looking over the table. "So we can..." He cleared his throat and ran his fingertips over the bridge of his nose, "have some."

[sortofaman]

"So," the Doctor said, having taken in the books as a whole, and the thonking of the ball against drywall and concrete, "laws."

He'd come around to sit and be Council, because hell, someone might come in looking for the Andorran Consulate today, and someone would have to be on hand, but apparently Toby was already on hand to address such issues. That said, he wasn't entirely keen on the whole law idea and someone had to keep an eye on that. The word pork came to mind. And bureaucracy and the fact that to enforce said laws, there would have to be a lot more volunteers. Volunteers that, if his husband and friends had any say, would be him only in small doses.

The Doctor was not keen on sleeping on couches.

He sipped his coffee. "I take it the laws are doing nasty things to your GI tract?"

[notplaying]

Toby glanced up a the Doctor, pausing in his throwing of the ball, before resuming it, stifling a sigh as he did.

"Politics did that," Toby said, "so at this point, I have no way of knowing. "

[sortofaman]

"I'll ask Rob to have the scientists look into digestive aids," the Doctor said, tongue firmly in cheek. "Shite, that's a lot of papers. Do we have that much paper here?"

[notplaying]

"A lot of it's recycled," Toby said, voice lifting slightly at the end of his sentence, having a brief and unpleasant flashback to fights of an environmental nature. "And when I say recycled I mean I've written on the backs of all it, as well. Some of it is a history of the Ancient Western world."