Guns & Roses

Chapter 19

                                  [Sheriff]

Sheriff was back in his bed, not at the agency but in the comfort of his home before Nevada.
'Before... Nevada?'
He wondered, how could he have existed before Nevada was named a state? The thought melted away, he assumed it must have been a strange dream. He shifted around in his bed until he was comfortable, he felt safe in the confines of his home, and so he let himself relax into the mattress supporting him. He didn't bother opening his eyes yet, his shift didn't start until a lot later today, so he would be able to sleep in. The comfortable warmth from the blanket turned into a near-searing heat, annoyed, he kicked the blanket off, though it didn't make him any cooler. He tried flipping the pillow to the other side for good measure, but found it was to no avail either. He really needed to stop putting off buying a fan, the Summers were getting too hot.

Sheriff heard his door open, he assumed it was probably Rango. For being a dog, they were pretty smart, he wouldn't be all too surprised if they learned how to open doors so they could force him to give them breakfast. He found himself smiling, amused by the lengths that dog would go to be fed an hour early.
"C'mon dude, you can get up now." A distant voice said , he didn't know how but it sounded oddly familiar. He felt something gently poke his side, once again he assumed it was Rango trying to wake him up, yet he was fixated on the voice, why was it so familiar to him?
"Heatwaves over. You don't need to sleep through it anymore." It spoke again, more clear this time.
'Wait, I... haven't been to my house since... since...'
He struggled to remember, the memories on the cusp of being remembered, yet the ones he did have were too vague to piece it together. He felt himself being shaken, confused and surprised, he opened his eyes.

Right, Deimos, that's why the voice was so familiar!
"God damn, I thought you died on us there!" Deimos cried, backing up from a still-disoriented Sheriff. He took a second to look around to grasp his surroundings, he was in a small bathroom with 2-3 stalls lined up next to him, on the other end was a sink with godawful piping which was constantly leaking. He hoped he hadn't accidentally slept in the water without realising, he doubted it though, since the heatwave probably evaporated it all before it could go anywhere. He slowly woke up some more, remembered how he ended up here, by forcing himself to get it together when the heatwave was starting and walking around trying to find somewhere good to stay, as well as following Sanford's advice. He felt a little embarrassed by his earlier breakdown, in hindsight, lots of what he was panicking over didn't make sense.

"Hey, wake up, don't fall back asleep on me." Deimos demanded, though Sheriff could hear some amusement in their voice, so he wasn't too worried.
"Yeah, Yeah, I'm staying awake." Sheriff mumbled, rubbing his eyes in an attempt to wake himself more. It didn't really do anything to help him wake up, he wondered if the building could have a coffee-maker somewhere, that usually got him up when all else failed.
"For a guy who used to live at his workplace, you're pretty shit at getting up." Deimos commented, Sheriff chuckled at that, mostly because it was more straight-forward than he was used to. Back at HQ the guys there didn't really say anything like that to Sheriff in case they got in trouble, so hearing this sort of stuff was refreshing for him.
"I'm just catching up on sleep, you'd be surprised how much I had to pull all-nighters back there." Sheriff said, finally getting himself onto his feet.
"You were at like... the top though, couldn't you pass work on to someone else?" Deimos asked, their tone shifting somewhere closer to genuine curiosity.
"I wish." Sheriff sighed, Deimos began walking out, and Sheriff followed them, assuming they'd be leading him somewhere.

"Why not? What are the people below you gonna say? 'No'?" Deimos said, if only it were that simple.
"Can't do that, it's... more a matter of work quality that's the problem." Sheriff explained, trying to figure out how to get across to Deimos the kind of situation it was.
"'Work quality'? What did you have to write, essays or some shit?" Deimos asked, they were actually surprisingly close to guessing what part of his work was.
"Almost. As part of my job I have to write incident reports, which actually includes you guys raiding these buildings, it can also include stuff like workplace injury, broken machinery and the occasional explosion or two." Sheriff rambled, realising he accidentally referred to himself still having the job. He hoped they hadn't picked up on that, though, thankfully it seemed they didn't.
"Those are easy though, right? You just write what happened." Deimos assumed while they grabbed Sheriff's arm to keep each others balance and carefully began guiding him through a particularly bloody hallway.
"Well Yeah, but these things have to be detailed reports, so I write the exact time things that happened and each little thing about it. I also have to do a new one for each individual person involved." Sheriff elaborated, Deimos let go of his arm after they cleared the last stretch of blood.
"For- for every person?" Deimos repeated back with genuine shock, as much as Sheriff wanted to say he didn't expect that kind of reaction, he would be like that too if he hadn't had that job for so long.
"Yeah." Sheriff confirmed as they passed a corner, finding Hank and Sanford a little ways over.
"That's bullshit dude, no way they expect you to do all that." Deimos stated, apparently they must've thought Sheriff was lying, he honestly wished he was lying, at least then his job wouldn't be so exhausting.