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All around him, life happened. Life that Pasi didn't give two shits about, happened. The world was over-populated anyway and he couldn't be arsed to contemplate the minutia of each person - nor would he have wanted to. The longest relationship he had with someone other than his parents, was with a man he 'affectionately' nicknamed "dickhead" in his phone and that he booty-called whenever he got the urge. It was not a loving nor affectionate relationship, and it would never be one.

Pasi preferred to work with electronics, with pieces and parts. Dealing with human beings was messy, often unpleasant, and ultimately something he liked keeping on his terms or not at all.

So when he found himself being slammed into by some running stranger, his first reaction was to snap out Finnish invectives even as both were pushed back from the force of the collision. It took a few moments before his brain registered the feel of hot coffee soaking into his clothing, setting hot, damp denim to skin. "********, really!?"

And then his brain jumped to his bag, where his home-brew laptop was -- a machine he'd built with care, a machine that most folks would have found as easy to work on as a blind man trying to utilize Tony Stark's holographic displays effectively. "No! Goddammit--" Again he devolved into Finnish, roundly cursing the shorter man and his stupid coffee and inability to watch where he was going and his ancestors back a thousand years; Pasi's hands struggled to pull the machine out of the wet bag, snarling further with how wet the casing was. "If this is ruined--"

Pasi narrowed his eyes - whomever this idiot was, he was going to fix this. The Finn grabbed for his sleeve, letting his laptop fall back into the bag - it could get no worse, really. Either it was fried or it wasn't. "You are coming with me." Anger and upset had brought his accent out more heavily, vowels rounded and swallowed into his throat, leaving them oddly turned. He would take no argument - Mr. I-Don't-Watch-Where-I'm-Going was going to Pasi's apartment and if the laptop was in need of parts to replace and fix it....well, he'd be taking care of it. Right then.

Dorian's sorry put no dent in the ire rolling off Pasi in waves, and his balking did not help his cause either. "Yes. You will. But you stupid-- this is not some bought thing!" He couldn't believe it, this idiot with a pretty face was denying him - was stopping to pick up the trash when his carelessness had put scalding coffee to Pasi's clothes, skin, and precious laptop.

And he has the gall to say to me 'slow down'!?

"You try not to litter." There was a dangerous flatness to the Finn's tone as Dorian bent to gather garbage; granted he was against littering in principle as well, but there were More Important Things and one had to prioritize. Pretty but stupid. Came the thought along with that Dorian was small - not a tiny thing, but certainly of a size that Pasi would have few issues man-handling.

People were looking at them curiously, then warily when they caught Pasi's actual expression as he moved to collect Dorian. "Since you have stupid, we do this the hard way." With a grunt and ahissed exhalation, Pasi bent to grab Dorian and put him over his left shoulder; he even gave his captive a very sharp smack on the a** when he started struggling. "If you keep up, I will beat you and we will continue to my apartment." Long strides unhampered by sticking denim, Pasi went about carrying Dorian off like this were something he did on a daily basis (it was not).

To his credit, Dorian behaved fairly well - it seemed he did not like the idea of being the center of attention or causing a scene any further than his hanging off Pasi's shoulder made him - so instead of kicking or screaming, he tried to reason with the Finn. The whole way, Dorian spoke low and quiet at him, and Pasi responded with a very flat affect, at one point bothering to explain something of the machine he were most concerned about. "My laptop is not Best Buy garbage, I built it and we go to see if it works. If not, you will be in much pain for it." Strong emotions set his speech patterns back further, with proper English and grammar sliding to the wayside. The smaller man's 'People are watching' got a snort that meant amusement and replied that yes, of course they were. What did he expect?

Pasi held Dorian to his shoulder, his left hand firm on the small of his back to keep him in place while the right was ready to deliver further punishment if necessary (it was not, though he did have to steady his cargo once or twice). This is the way they would travel all the way back to his apartment near the DCU campus; even with his annoyance (okay, fine anger) at having been doused in hot coffee, having his laptop probably ruined, and then having to drag the cause away from garbage clean up, Pasi did notice that the backside under his hand wasn't that bad - it was how he helped distract himself on the way home.

Was it perhaps telling that those in his building barely reacted to Pasi carting about another human being up to the top floor? He fished his sticky keys out from his damp and stinking bag and entered his apartment, where Kisa beeped in greeting and the skittered away with a low electronic buzz. Dorian would not be released until the door were shut and locked behind them; only then would Pasi set him down.

"You will stay until I see what damage you did." But he did not move from the doorway, just in case Dorian had the bright idea of trying to escape; what he did do was peel out of his damp clothing, down to his boxers, right then and there. His skin was pinked and angry looking where the coffee had splashed, but mostly he was physically unhurt. The laptop, however, would be another story entirely. "If I need parts, you buy. Then you can go."

"Is agreed?"

"I leave Kisa at the door, you try anything you get tased. Fifty-thousand volts. Bzzt." His parting words as Dorian obediently skittered to the wash area and bathroom. While his 'house-guest' was occupied, Pasi gave short commands in Finnish to the not!roomba, which chirruped acceptance and set up guard at the front door. Excessive? Perhaps, but Pasi wasn't in the mood to have someone skip out on paying for destroying his work.

Once that were settled, Pasi went into the small kitchen area to wet a rag and wipe down, then upstairs to put sweats on. Dorian still was locked away in his bathroom by the time he was ready to crack open his laptop, so he simply went down stairs to do so, muttering darkly the whole while as his blunt-nailed fingers with all their burn callouses felt over the drying stickiness. He might have crooned at it a bit, sadly, before setting the whole business upside down on a plastic surface, wiping over the outside with a damp cloth. Whether it would do any good to start outside in...well, if he were handling the parts, he'd clean them as they went.

A screwdriver saw the casing opened, had the dark haired Finn hissing angrily. Wet. Inside. Not so good. Dorian emerged from the restroom and Pasi called to him, "Down stairs. Come, ja." So far it was bad news and lord was Dorian going to be upset when he discovered that Pasi was going to charge him not only for the parts but for his labor as well - and that was the expensive part!

"Power supply is ruined, motherboard maybe. I cannot tell yet." But he would, yes, once he'd taken everything apart, cleaned it and dried it, and then put it back together with a new power supply. Luckily, he worked very quickly and with an economy of motion that said he did this sort of thing a lot and was quite good at it.

"Battery ********, not so lucky." But it looked like the graphics card and processor were alright., so perhaps Dorian wasn't in nearly the trouble he'd thought. "Hmm..." Pasi stepped away from the half rebuilt laptop and pulled parts from a bin on a shelf, glancing over at Dorian with a bit of curiosity; he could tell the man was quite upset, perhaps frightened. He was fidgeting worriedly. "Sit," He gestured towards a battered couch, "I will be done soon, then we will know how bad this is."

A few minutes more and he'd rigged it up to check, a secondary laptop hooked to it for diagnostics on the remaining parts. "Okay, it runs twenty minutes, maybe less." He pulled his hair loose, then pulled it back up more neatly while looking over at Dorian before stepping close and offering a hand, "Pasi Järvinen. You are?"

Dorian's surprise at his being treated like a person instead of a prisoner set an amused tilt to his mouth; that he didn't have a high opinion wasn't surprising. Pasi found that his behaviours - even when he wasn't carting folks off over his shoulder fire-man style - could be off-putting unless he were making the effort to be 'charming'. "Dorian? Like the hedonist? But not."

After shaking hands, Pasi rolled his shoulders a bit; he was used to hauling things around and was quite strong but he'd be feeling the strain of carrying a person later, probably wake with a stiff neck and sore back muscles. Worth it, he would not have come otherwise. Probably. This time, Dorian's apology had more effect and the Finn nodded. "Not smart, running with hot coffee. Burn someone, like me." He cocked his head a bit, noting the dampness of the First Date Shirt (tm). "And you." The thoughtful look deepened, but Pasi turned and moved across the room and back towards the stairs.

"You want a drink? There's water and juice there," He gestured to a small fridge tucked under a slightly raised plank that turned the whole thing into an end table, "Or cheap beer, milk, other things. In the kitchen." And then he disappeared up the stairs to do god only knew what while the diagnostics ran on his laptop and Kisa beeped in the foyer. Dorian wouldn't know, but he'd stopped to send Kisa into hibernation and then went to find a shirt - no sense staying sticky the whole time, that was rude wasn't it?

When he returned, Pasi caught Dorian's attention before gently lobbing the balled up t-shirt at him - blue, with a faded superman logo screen printed on it. "Change, you will be more comfortable I think." Bending to get a small container of orange juice from the mini-fridge, Pasi went back to his workbench and made a sound that managed to be not only impatient, but also long-suffering.

"Slow...but slow is good. If it were faster, I would be more worried...."

With his obviously buttoned down manner and flustery, fluttery reactions to things...yes, Pasi could feel fairly certain Dorian wasn't a hedonist the way Wilde's book described it's Dorian.

"Ja, who does not like the Man of Steel?" He had time, while Dorian was changing, to break out a second juice and set it near the whirring laptops, to stretch his hands towards the ceiling and rub at his neck. To contemplate the Skolem problem (though not for nearly long enough to puzzle out anything useful, which really wasn't the point just then) and use the doing of to eat time while he waited for the diagnostics to complete and for mousy Dorian Paul to return from changing.

Such an odd fellow. A thought echoed when Dorian returned but did not reseat himself as the Finn expected, instead coming closer to the ordered-but-chaotic workbench. The little mouse grows brave, it seems. We only had to give it clothing. "Ah, is no good to keep wearing something soiled." He did not acceptance that the shirt would be returned - which was nice, it was one he rather liked wearing, having worn it so often that it was soft and comfortable. "So far, power supply and battery, which is not so good but not so bad." He skimmed over the data scrolling slowly on the secondary laptop's screen while off-handedly offering the small container of orange juice in Dorian's direction.

"I will need to rebuild motherboard as well." It had been damaged, not completely but he wasn't about to continue working on something sub-par or that might spark a fire someday when he wasn't paying attention. The apartment complex would likely have made a big stink if they knew he was playing around with flammable, dangerous things all the time as it were. Pasi gestured a bit at the electronics and made a sound kind of like an abused mule, "It will take hours to rebuild and set up to my standards."

And yes, he still blamed Dorian, but at least he wasn't making threats. "We will order parts, then I will bill you for labor."

Without waiting to see how Dorian would take that, he went to a very jury-rigged desk (a plank, really, on some filing cabinets) where a desktop computer rested, along with some rather sketchy looking bits of hardware that Pasi could have told him were to build fake IDs. "Why were you running, it's not a smart thing to do with coffee."

Between schooling, his Youtube channel, the Craigslist projects, and making faux IDs for folks...Pasi's time was precious. Never mind that he also had to spend time powered up, it meant that any time he had to spend on fixing something that should have been fine came dear; even so, he'd already made up his mind to only charge fifteen dollars an hour. It had been an accident, it was his own gear damaged, and charging more than that was extraneous. The Finn's fingers twitched across the keyboard in spurts, interjected with the slide of his mouse - he was pulling up his favorite parts supply and loading in the components he would need to repair just what he'd told Dorian, then straightened. The total wasn't bad, just a bit over two hundred and thirty seven dollars for the motherboard pieces alone - but likely Dorian would know nothing about computers beyond how to use them and would balk. And that is not battery, power supply, nor labor.

Adding the remaining hardware in brought the total closer to three hundred and fifty bucks, something that made him sigh and push one hand over his face while glancing over at the man cruising his workspace curiously. He accepted paying labor and has been reasonable, it would be annoying if that changed. Still, I am undercharging already. Pasi printed out the list with projected cost (with shipping) and then grabbed a red sharpie to break the items down into what they'd be used to make. If he absolutely had to, he could probably make do without the power supply. The battery was likewise required.

As he fussed over the paper, Dorian explained his thwarted plans for the evening. "A date? From the internet or someone you know. It can be dangerous to meet strangers in Destiny City." Pasi was absolutely thinking about the Negaverse, about how Dia had used him to lure in civilians so she could take their starseeds. "Ah, sorry. It is not my business. Only that it is dangerous here, with those costumed freaks running around." In sharpie, Pasi put bold strokes to paper, writing out his hourly rate of fifteen dollars and estimating the time it would take him to rebuild - but not reprogram - his machine. If it were a simpler machine, he could have done all the hardware work in two, maybe three hours..but his build was unique and some of those parts were not standard at all. Another glance at Dorian and he marked three to five hours down.

"Here is hardware components with cost, and also labor. It's fair cost, but-" He wasn't short-selling himself, it was more that he was a college student and knew that people often didn't have a lot of 'disposable' cash laying around, "If costs need split, I could make do now with just the motherboard." The Finn moved closer to Dorian to offer the print-out, "I do not know your situation, but will try to work with you. It is not as costly as it could be, but it is not cheap." You are also very lucky the whole rig wasn't destroyed, I may have bought the parts over time and built as I could, but it's several thousand dollars and specialty parts that take months to build.

Pasi's phone buzzed from where he'd set it on his workspace, "Excuse me. If you have questions about the estimate, I will go over it." Snagging his phone and seeing that he had several messages, Pasi thumbed through them. Two from Jack, one from Archer. Jack wanted to hang out, his Tinder date had bailed on him...and Archer wanted the same thing he always wanted, which meant that Pasi either had to kick Dorian out now...or miss out on some pretty spectacular sex. But this was important and also classified as business, so he could not boot the brunet, no matter how much he might have wanted to spend some time bedding his favorite playmate.

His reply to Jack was short and snarky, 'I do not want to have sex with you. Also, I am busy. Go annoy the dark-eyed woman.' The one to Archer made him grit his teeth and contemplate just...strangling the buttoned-up little mouse that had no idea just what he was costing Pasi. With a rough-sounding swear, “Tämä on perseestä--”, he dropped his phone and returned his attention to Dorian. "Questions?"

Three hundred and fifty for parts, his labour costs would go on top of that, but it really wasn't that bad, all things considered. Certainly the cost wouldn't compare to that of a new Macbook, but most people (who wouldn't know what such things cost) would have winced at the part list, cheap as it really was.

And there was Dorian saying he was a surprising person, which made his brows raise even as he was fussing with his phone. Really, nothing that Dorian said was inaccurate - he had in fact threatened him, carried him off, and then threatened violence if he tried to fight back. Pasi was also not extorting him for copious amounts of cash and was treating him fairly - for the most part. It would seem weird, wouldn't it?

"Doesn't count labour, but ja. I am not trying to fleece you. Enough to cover the cost is all I need." Still agitated, the Finn was doing his best to modulate his tone and temper - it wasn't entirely his fault he was being a terrible c**k-block and that Pasi was going to miss out on Archer time.

Pasi sighed and ran one hand over his face, trying to return to a less aggressive attitude since he had clearly caused Dorian to clam up again from discomfiture. "Do not worry, the phone only had annoying news. Nothing you have caused." See? He even tried to smile, though making Americans feel more at ease was not a skill-set that came easily.