happilyeverbeginning | he's down on his luck / he's down on his knees (scrooge x poe)

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he's down on his luck / he's down on his knees (scrooge x poe)

This hadn't been the best plan, but for Poe De Spell, it was the only plan he had. He'd lost track of how long it'd been since that fateful day he ran away in the middle of the night, in a desperate escape to get away from his parent's clutches. The arranged marriage had been the straw that broke the camel's back.

What a sight he must be now, he mused. The high-class fashion he was once so proud of was basically in tatters. He had long since run out of the money he could use - he didn't bring his credit cards, that would have made for easy tracking. Anything he had managed to take had now been sold just so he could eat and maybe find a roof to sleep under, but even that wasn't made to be forever.

Where did one find work when your grades were bribed to As? Who did you trust, when his parents had a bounty on his head?

He did keep his phone, but it was off. If he turned it on, his parents would find him. But it was a last chance deal - if truly all else failed, he'd use it. He prayed it never came to that. Even if it meant selling the last thing he had - himself.

He sat on the side of the road, ignoring his stomach growling for the umpteenth time, eyes distant and not really staring at anything.

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"... I've been there a few times." Poe admitted, eyes away once he was back in the truck. "Not a lot of friendly faces, to put it mildly."

Scrooge nodded his head. "Aye. I've been to a few myself when it was too cold even in the truck. Freezing to death wouldn't help my family."

"It is a comfort to know you have your limits." It was difficult to tell if Poe was being sarcastic or not.

Scrooge snorted. "I take my responsibilities seriously."

His face perked up as they reached a strip mall, spying a sign for a temp agency. He pulled into the parking lot.

"So, what's this place? What are we doing now?" What other wonders of the commoner world was he about to experience?

"Now we get to go in, introduce ourselves, get asked some questions about our skills, and get put into the system to see if anything matches up. If it looks like they don't have much, we'll probably have to move on to the next town."

"... Hm. Skills." Poe said slowly, trying to think. He'd really have to be quick on his feet with bull-shitting and word loopholes. "Let's hope we're as lucky here as we were to get that jacket."

Scrooge didn't get out of the truck, looking towards Poe. "...Let's go over what you can do."

What could he do? Poe was confident about his looks and... that was about it. Years of his parents buying his way through school told him that his worth as a person was meaningless. He was just a body that held the Spell name, so it never mattered what he could accomplish on his own. After running away from home, anything he'd probably learned from school had likely been diminished if not eradicated.

His self-confidence was shredded to ribbons. He was having an honest to goodness difficult time thinking of why anyone would want him.

"I don't... I don't know." he said very quietly.

Scrooge watched Poe struggle and felt his heart twist in sympathy.

"What were your hobbies before? Did you make crafts, do art...?"

"Aside from drinking and partying?" He asked bitterly before shaking his head. Going down that path would just make things worse.

He rubbed his temples, thinking. "... Sometimes... the mansion had a library. Not that any of us ever actually read the damn things, it was just to show off. But... if I was dodging calls, I'd hide in there, and get bored, so I'd... organize them, I guess. Try to put stuff in alphabetical order, date published, that sort of thing. "

"So organization. That's a good skill. You were always good at talking to people, so communication. Can you type or take notes quickly?"

Poe nodded slowly. "It's been a while, but my fingers were always fastest on my phone and computer keys... but are they really just going to take my word for it?"

"You might have to take a small test for it, but usually they don't do much checking."

"I haven't taken a test in years... But I guess this time, I can at least say I'll earn whatever I get." An odd comfort.

"These aren't tasks you have to study for. You might have a typing speed test where they give you something to type and the computer will judge your accuracy in addition to your speed."

"I haven't done that in a while... but I admit, I rarely had typos. One wrong spelling at the wrong group of people, and it becomes a running joke you never live down."

"So you'll be fine. Maybe a bit rusty but that's fixed easily enough."

"... You're awfully confident in me." What was that all about?

"You're not trying to get a job as a rocket scientist. You said so yourself: You can answer a phone and take messages. It won't be glamorous or pay that much, but it's work experience which can give you an edge for the next job and so on and so forth down the line."

Or maybe Scrooge was doing that thing were he was shoving panic down deep into his body.

"... Then let's give it a go. At least one of us has faith."

Scrooge raised a brow. "The way I see it, if we try and fail, we learn something for next time. You don't learn anything if everything is an immediate success."

"Tell that to my parents." Poe dead-panned, beginning to get out of the truck. "If I didn't get perfection on the first try, they did all in their power to make it look like I did anyway."

"And that's why you had no idea what you could do," Scrooge pointed out. "But we'll figure something out one way or another."

At this rate, they were going to go like this forever in circles. So, with a sigh, Poe finally just shut up and followed Scrooge inside.

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