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Steve just wasn’t sure about this. Not the fact that he was on a solo snag, he’d been around long enough to be comfortable with that, but the fact that he was going all the way to Geneva without anyone who knew the place. ATF credentials only go so far internationally, after all. Claud was off in Oregon, Pete and Myka in Santa Fe, of all places, and Artie muttered something about terrorists. He decided that he wasn’t going to ask.
Somehow, he was able to bluff and bluster his way through security, and actually into the core of the chaos of CERN. As he tried to talk to people, he realized quickly that many of them spoke fragmented English at best, and his French was non-existent. Finally, he came to a Japanese man who at least deigned to snort at him every so often.
“Listen, I know you’re lying about not speaking English. Can you at least get me someone who does?” Steve sighed, exasperated as the man wandered off.
Just as Steve was about to go after him and give him a piece of his mind, another man came around the corner, hair mussed, white lab coat crumpled, with a sheepish look on his face. There was something adorably disheveled about him, like a lovably silly absent-minded professor. Steve jolted himself out of his thoughts (aren’t most scientists painfully straight anyway?) as the guy spoke up in a thankfully American accent.
“I am so sorry about that. Shinji can be such an asshole when he thinks he’s better than someone.” The man sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “He said something about a Federal agent looking for something?”
Steve started to explain what he was there to do and as he started asking about the caffeine highs, the other man turned bright red. “Oh, fuck. I haven’t bagged that thing in ages, have I? Well, we have been busy, part of the Collider decided to go and break, and I’m no engineer, but they’ve pretty much had everyone down there with welding tools trying to fix it, but that really isn’t an excuse, and I’m babbling again. Shit.”
“Ah. You must be Claudia’s brother.” Steve tried to hold back a laugh. It was probably bad how much this guy knew about the Warehouse, especially the Warehouse’s methods, but at that moment, he just seemed too flighty to be of any actual harm.
“Yeah , I’m Joshua. You must be Jinksy… er, I mean Steve.” He shook Steve’s hand, a bit more firmly than Steve was expecting. “You’d probably better come with me.”
Joshua led Steve through the halls and into a fairly-messy apartment. One desk was absolutely covered in static bags and neutralizer gloves. Steve just shook his head at the chaos. “Claudia does know you’re doing this, right?”
“Yeah.” Joshua picked up some strange ram statue and put it in a static bag. After the requisite sparks, Joshua handed it to Steve. “Um. She doesn’t know exactly the extent of what I’m doing, though. I haven’t told her that I’ve, uh…” Joshua trailed off, and stared at the pile of crap on the desk.
“One or more of these is yours, isn’t it?” Steve could just tell from Joshua’s face that he somehow figured out that he created an Artifact.
“Yeah, so when you have to shelve that thing, the provenance is Joshua Donovan, 2012, in a fit of brilliance or something like it while writing a dissertation.” He sighed, and Steve watched his shoulders drop a bit. “Frankly, it’s the most interesting thing I’ve worked on in months.”
Steve decided not to ask why he hadn’t asked about officially researching Artifacts, because, well, he was pretty certain that Claudia would have mentioned it to her brother more than a few times. He did however, ask a couple questions about CERN and Joshua was off on that adorable absent-minded professor shtick again.
It was at least an hour before someone’s stomach growled and Joshua suggested dinner. Time passed, they both laughed, they got to know each other, their differences, and some actual somewhat-geeky similarities, and Steve was wondering if he could count this a quasi-successful first date. Eventually, as Joshua took him to the airport the next day, they exchanged Skype contacts, and Steve was just a bit more hopeful. Frankly, he wished Claudia had mentioned she had such an adorable brother.