melnitzj
Janine Melnitz
She/her. Receptionist. Racquetball enthusiast. Extremely tired.
462 posts
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[Egon dips his head in an appreciative acknowledgement of Janine’s blanket positioning and pulls the fabric a touch closer. He unzips his boots and kicks them off, careful not to disturb Cakes. No sense in wearing them at the moment. In his mind, he’s pinned to the couch until such a time as the cat decides to get off his lap.
He heaves a weary sigh, melting and slouching into the couch. Why did crying have to leave such a heavy exhaustion in its wake? Why did he feel so sleepy and vulnerable? He lets his head flop back onto the headrest and stares at the ceiling.]
Mm. Wonder if there’s any magic in feeling like the victim of a hit-and-run.
[He scratches Cakes beneath her chin with one hand whilst the other absently doodles little circles in the soft blanket covering a portion of his leg.]
I suppose it could’ve been worse. At least I’ve got bragging rights now — a deity threatened me and I lived to tell the tale. Yippee.
[He says all of this flatly, staring blankly at the ceiling. At his unenthusiastic exclamation, he raises a listless fist in the air in mock celebration. The emotion wells up again, stinging his eyes. A single tear escapes the corner of his eye and he wipes it away quickly.]
…But good G-d was that terrifying. I…genuinely thought that Gozer would zap me into oblivion. I’d be here one moment and a char mark on the tile the next. …Or worse. Gozer could’ve bypassed me entirely and gone for —
[He’s getting a bit worked up now, so he stops the sentence in its tracks. Slowly, he shakes his head, swallowing tensely.]
Nevermind. …I don’t even want to consider it.
[Egon sniffles a bit and blinks the tears away. He considers his next words carefully. ]
You know, in a way, I’m…I’m glad it was you who found me. …I don’t relish the idea of anyone else seeing me like this. …Aside from the cat, I mean.
[Janine snorts.]
Well, sure there is. There has to be. When you’re well rested and back to your old self, that’s when the magic comes in.
[Every movement Egon makes exists in Janine’s periphery - the ripples in the air from his motions all feel heightened somehow, and she strains herself to notice them as if they’re tiny whispers made from the bottom of a well.]
Yeah, can you imagine? Peter especially. I’m glad he’s off with Dana right now, she’s a good influence on him. Makes him actually start considerin’ other people’s problems and sense of peace.
[She pauses, and crosses her legs for something to do. When she speaks, it’s careful and measured in a way that Janine normally doesn’t even consider, but she wants to leave it open to him.]
We don’t have to talk about the whole thing, you know, if you don’t want. We can talk about anything at all. Except, you know, taxes. Anything except that.
[Humming. Beeping. Bits of metal clanking against each other. The soft roar of Queen music. Pencils and pens scratching quietly against paper. Quiet, absentminded mutterings.
All common sounds to emit from the lab when Janine walks by its door, any time of the day or night.
But now she stands frozen outside the door, one hand curled tightly around the cool copper handle.
Her stomach had dropped when she had first heard the broken sobbing.
Swallowing, she called out, “Knock knock”, before slowly opening the door, fighting the urge to just throw it wide open and let it bang into the wall.
Her heart breaks as she catches sight of her friend. Her boots thump softly on the floor as she crosses to Egon, and she sinks to the floor to kneel in front of him, and when she speaks, it’s quiet and soft around the edges in a way that it normally isn’t.]
Egon?
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[She nods, scratching the back of her head, smiling a little.]
She sure is. I think she’s got some kind of feline superpowers, if I’m bein’ honest. Though maybe that’s also just ‘cause I hang around all of yous all day with your signs in everything...
[She covers her arm where she could still feel the ghost of the touch, more of a graze, really, but it feels different and significant. But now is decidedly not the time, and so when she sits down on the sofa she sits with enough space to seat at least one of their friends between them, grabbing the blanket that sits over the top of the couch, stretching her legs out instead.]
[Sitting side-by-side staring ahead at nothing would be too awkward. Instead, she busies herself by smoothing the blanket out and throwing at least a little bit over Egon’s leg—the one Cakes-free, that is.]
But I like it, you know. I like that you guys find a little bit of magic in everything.
[Humming. Beeping. Bits of metal clanking against each other. The soft roar of Queen music. Pencils and pens scratching quietly against paper. Quiet, absentminded mutterings.
All common sounds to emit from the lab when Janine walks by its door, any time of the day or night.
But now she stands frozen outside the door, one hand curled tightly around the cool copper handle.
Her stomach had dropped when she had first heard the broken sobbing.
Swallowing, she called out, “Knock knock”, before slowly opening the door, fighting the urge to just throw it wide open and let it bang into the wall.
Her heart breaks as she catches sight of her friend. Her boots thump softly on the floor as she crosses to Egon, and she sinks to the floor to kneel in front of him, and when she speaks, it’s quiet and soft around the edges in a way that it normally isn’t.]
Egon?
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Rate the way that your friends get your attention out of 10
Winston does this nice thing of just saying my name a coupla times if I'm really engrossed in something, and then sometimes like he'll just reach out and lightly touch my arm if I'm really distracted or I haven't acknowledged him yet. He's the only person who's allowed to do this. 8/10.
Ray's usually pretty good at getting my attention. He has this kind of adorable habit of knocking on my desk whenever I'm busy with work to let me know that he's there. Sometimes he just starts to talk first if he's really excited though, and I have to get him to go back and take it from the top, because he'll be several sentences deep into a spiel on the seal population by then. 7/10
Egon kind of just...hovers whenever he wants something. Like he'll just stand there behind ya or at the edge of your vision, just kind of staring. I've told him it'd be more helpful if he'd just say whatever it is that he needs, but in the several years that I've known him, this has not changed. 4/10.
Peter. It should not shock anyone that he's in dead last. Usually he comes up with somethin' that's really unattractive to call me, like bug-eyes but then sometimes he'll call me somethin' like Bowie (like David Bowie, ya know?) because he says we have similar-looking hair. Honestly, I think he's just allergic to my name or something. Makes it difficult to figure out who exactly it is that he's talkin to. 1/10.
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[Ray has the same look on his face as one who vaguely recognizes an acquaintance in public but is unable to place from where the familiarity stems. Friend of a friend? Old classmate? Simply one of those faces?
Egon muses briefly at how strange it is to be regarded like this by his best friend. Well…not his best friend. The other him’s best friend. Which he supposes makes this Ray his best friend too, even if he’s technically a version of his best friend, not the exact same man.
He shakes the thought off before it can become even more convoluted.
Ray has a different look on his face now.
That “the assignment was due today??” look. That “it’s the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man” look. That “get me out of this hole” look.
The look of utter distress that he can’t quite hide convincingly.
He gives Ray a small, understanding smile at his message and inclines his head slightly.
While Ray scrawls a note to Janine, Egon fiddles with his collar idly, undoing the top button and loosening his tie a little. He rolls his neck and flexes his shoulders. The tense muscles stretch and subsequently relax by the barest amount. It isn’t much, but he’ll take it.
He turns toward Janine and bites back a smile at the way her hair looks, all sticking up and wild. It’s not a bad look for her, he muses, even if she does look thoroughly tired. …Focus, Spengler.]
I wouldn’t mind some coffee, if you’re going to be making some anyway, Janine.
[Egon gets the sense that she needs a simple, mundane task or two right now; he can’t blame her. He massages the spot where his neck meets his shoulder while he listens to Ray‘s next message. This warrants a reply aloud in plain English, he decides. Placing his hands in his pockets, he meets Ray’s eyes.]
Raymond, there’s no need to apologize or make it up to us. After all, none of this is any fault of yours. In fact, it seems every part of this situation has been completely out of our control.
…We’ll get you home as soon as we can. Until then, we’ll be happy to have you as our guest.
[Janine nods along to what Egon’s saying, although most of it exists in her perception as a kind of quiet, low droning noise. It’s kind of nice, actually.
She sticks one hand up on her hip and nods in Ray’s general direction - they both look like just kind of hazy blobs now, like an abstract painting that spelled out a still life of people you know, just out of focus.]
One coffee and one water.
[She turns on her heel and is soothed by the way her shoes sound against the floor as she begins to walk away, thinking of the box of cereal they have in the kitchen. She really hopes they have milk. Knowing them though, there might just be a quarter-full bottle of half-and-half in the fridge and maybe some expired buttermilk.]
Nobody die while I’m gone.
[He’d been fiddling with the inter-dimensional device all morning. Unwilling or unable to do anything else in the midst of his anxiety—especially with Egon being strangely quiet about whatever he was planning with all the research he was doing—Ray had turned to nervous tinkering, hoping above all hope that it would keep his nerves calm. That it would quell the urge he had to race over to Elon and Walter and Louis with proton pack in hand and start blasting away until every last trace of Tiamat’s presence was gone and they could finally rest easy. That it would erase his thoughts of being useless now. A failure. Someone who might as well not even be here.
But it didn’t, it hadn’t, and that was how Ray found himself now. Staring at a machine that still stubbornly refused to work no matter what he did to it, feeling frightened and worn down and so very small in the face of all of this chaos.]
God damn it.
[Swatting some miscellaneous bits and pieces off of the countertop, Ray despondently laid his head down on the table’s surface, letting out a low groan of displeasure. How could he just....just sit here when his friends were in danger? Tiamat was a god more powerful than Gozer themselves had been, and it had been dumb fucking luck that they had even managed to defeat Gozer the first time—but there had to be something he was missing. Something other than smashing a stupid computer modem that had to help here. Surely there was some bit of research that he hadn’t done, or material he hadn’t looked over, or—
—hadn’t there been an apple sitting on the table a minute prior?
Startling, Ray sat up as a tiny blue and white light began to sprout out of the inter-dimensional device, growing and swelling with every passing minute and serving to pull some miscellaneous office supplies in with it. Peering at it quizzically, Ray leaned forward slightly to study it in a mixture of fascination and horror, debating whether he should grab an instrument of some kind in order to measure the energy signature coming off of the portal—the fact that it seemed to be generating its own gravity field alone was a subject for fascination—but then there was a sudden, terrible yanking sensation, and Ray found himself being pulled towards the light-]
Nononononono, SHIT-
[And into it.
It was like being put in the spin cycle on a dryer in the worst possible way. Everything was spinning and glowing and he felt like he was going to be sick but somehow it felt like he couldn’t get enough breath into his system to actually do so and oh god this was how it ended, after everything he’d faced down Raymond Stantz was going to get killed by a goddamn light tunnel of all things-
And then he was promptly eating pavement.
Sitting up and spitting refuse out of his mouth, Ray barely paid mind to the buildings around him and how they looked oddly familiar—he instead tried to scramble for the light again, thinking that if he’d gone through it one way he could certainly go back, but then it was shrinking in on itself and disappearing-]
No. No no no, don’t you DARE close on me, come on-
[But then it was gone. And Ray was alone, somehow feeling even MORE panicked than he had a moment previous.]
Oooookay, Ray. Don’t panic. You’re just.....stuck in another reality. Away from your friends who are in danger. Definitely don’t see anything to panic about there.
[Wait. He was....in front of the firehouse. Not his, but frighteningly similar. Ray blinked owlishly for a moment, hoping above all hope that it was some kind of fucked up fever dream that his eyes were supplying him with-but when no sign of such a thing came, he was stumbling towards the door with all the intensity of a man on fire, rapping upon it with all the strength he had left in his system.]
Please answer please answer please answer-
@melnitzj @egonspenglerofficial
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[Janine takes the proffered hand, hauling herself to her feet. For a brief second, she is absorbed by the familiarity of the action, all of a sudden thrown back to when the containment unit had burst, and he had grabbed her hand running out of the building.]
[But that was...six years ago. Damn.]
[Then, aware that she’s been holding his hand for what is now turning into a very long time without letting go, she drops her hand to her side. Her hand feels warm all of a sudden, and she surreptitiously flexes it and attempts to wipe off any sweat against her thigh.]
Alright, to the couch we go.
[She opens the door, her eyes immediately landing on the couch on the other side of the room.]
[There had been some...interesting interior decorating choices when the business had just started, including but not limited to, a disgusting plastic-looking thing that was more of a bench than a sofa. Some time ago, the monstrosity had mysteriously disappeared, and in its place, a much plusher, much older green-grey sofa had shown up, laboriously carted up the stairs by Jonathan and his friend Sonny. A blanket was always draped over the back—also donated by Sonny, who’d claimed hurriedly it was just laying around for no reason at his apartment and thrust it into her hands, and it was so soft, impossibly soft—and there was always a pillow hiding somewhere off to the side, too, for when, not if, someone invariably fell asleep there.]
[It was dim, but light enough that she could see the outline of Cakes nestled on the sofa, looking up and mrrping at them.]
Huh, it’s like the cat is psychic, too.
[Humming. Beeping. Bits of metal clanking against each other. The soft roar of Queen music. Pencils and pens scratching quietly against paper. Quiet, absentminded mutterings.
All common sounds to emit from the lab when Janine walks by its door, any time of the day or night.
But now she stands frozen outside the door, one hand curled tightly around the cool copper handle.
Her stomach had dropped when she had first heard the broken sobbing.
Swallowing, she called out, “Knock knock”, before slowly opening the door, fighting the urge to just throw it wide open and let it bang into the wall.
Her heart breaks as she catches sight of her friend. Her boots thump softly on the floor as she crosses to Egon, and she sinks to the floor to kneel in front of him, and when she speaks, it’s quiet and soft around the edges in a way that it normally isn’t.]
Egon?
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[Janine shudders briefly as a chill hits her, and she suddenly blinks, her eyes feeling heavy and dry, almost as if every blink was a scrape.]
[She runs one hand through her hair, and it’s probably half sticking up now, looking all sorts of mussed, and she takes her readers off, letting them dangle from the chain on her neck. The world, its light, even the outlines of her friends - the one she’s known forever and the one who’s so similar to the one here, they all become blurry, and with that, somehow both so much more manageable to deal with, and also so much more stressful.]
Does anyone want any coffee? I’m gonna go make some coffee.
[He’d been fiddling with the inter-dimensional device all morning. Unwilling or unable to do anything else in the midst of his anxiety—especially with Egon being strangely quiet about whatever he was planning with all the research he was doing—Ray had turned to nervous tinkering, hoping above all hope that it would keep his nerves calm. That it would quell the urge he had to race over to Elon and Walter and Louis with proton pack in hand and start blasting away until every last trace of Tiamat’s presence was gone and they could finally rest easy. That it would erase his thoughts of being useless now. A failure. Someone who might as well not even be here.
But it didn’t, it hadn’t, and that was how Ray found himself now. Staring at a machine that still stubbornly refused to work no matter what he did to it, feeling frightened and worn down and so very small in the face of all of this chaos.]
God damn it.
[Swatting some miscellaneous bits and pieces off of the countertop, Ray despondently laid his head down on the table’s surface, letting out a low groan of displeasure. How could he just….just sit here when his friends were in danger? Tiamat was a god more powerful than Gozer themselves had been, and it had been dumb fucking luck that they had even managed to defeat Gozer the first time—but there had to be something he was missing. Something other than smashing a stupid computer modem that had to help here. Surely there was some bit of research that he hadn’t done, or material he hadn’t looked over, or—
—hadn’t there been an apple sitting on the table a minute prior?
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[Janine nods. The motion feels more heavy than usual, like the air itself was harder to move through.]
[Empty. She didn’t often feel that way - lucky enough to have enough gumption, to lift an eyebrow and have it cause waves had, for so much of her life, protected herself against the feeling. She ran hot and cold but never lukewarm.]
Maybe we can go find someplace where there’s a blanket and maybe one of those little cats of ours runnin’ around. That’d be nice, right?
[Humming. Beeping. Bits of metal clanking against each other. The soft roar of Queen music. Pencils and pens scratching quietly against paper. Quiet, absentminded mutterings.
All common sounds to emit from the lab when Janine walks by its door, any time of the day or night.
But now she stands frozen outside the door, one hand curled tightly around the cool copper handle.
Her stomach had dropped when she had first heard the broken sobbing.
Swallowing, she called out, “Knock knock”, before slowly opening the door, fighting the urge to just throw it wide open and let it bang into the wall.
Her heart breaks as she catches sight of her friend. Her boots thump softly on the floor as she crosses to Egon, and she sinks to the floor to kneel in front of him, and when she speaks, it’s quiet and soft around the edges in a way that it normally isn’t.]
Egon?
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We absolutely do!
I’ll be honest, this day always felt kind of like a joke havin’ my birthday land on it, but what can I say? I do love the candy. Take care, Faye.
Haven’t seen anything too scary yet, but you never know, there’s still a coupla hours left...
Happy birthday, Miss Faye! From one Halloween baby to another, may your day be decidedly not too spooky, and your year a good one.
Aw, that's real sweet of you Janine! A very Happy Birthday to you as well an' all those good wishes! We gotta stick together in this line of work, don't we?
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Good.
Happy Halloween, all. And more importantly, happy birthday to our lovely receptionist Janine Melnitz.
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Thanks, doc.
And for my next trick, I’ll be turning the exact same age as I did last year.
Happy Halloween, all. And more importantly, happy birthday to our lovely receptionist Janine Melnitz.
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Don’t be surprised if you find them all rehidden.
On your bed.
Happy Halloween.
Tiny pumpkins bought and deployed.
So I may have gotten a bit too into the spirit of the upcoming holiday and....hidden them in some locations within the firehouse. Nowhere near any sensitive equipment, just....where people won't notice them unless they look hard enough.
I'm considering it revenge for this universe's Peter trying to shoot down the idea in the first place.
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OOC
Due to some health issues, I’ll be taking a hiatus for an indefinite amount of time.
Doesn’t mean I’m not coming back; I just don’t have any clue as to when I will be back.
Thank you for all your continuing patience at this time. :) 💖
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is this anything
gatekeep gaslight ghosbust
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hi, jeanine, how do you take your coffee?
Hi yourself. :)
I don't actually drink coffee. I don’t like the taste of it.
Honestly, it’s probably one of the most singlehandedly confusing aspects about me. I do seem like I would be a coffee drinker.
I do, however, love the smell of freshly ground coffee beans.
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Pickles and ketchup.
Question — what are your ideal burger toppings? Aaaand go.
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