Aram sat at his desk, head in his hands, staring at the screen. His last search was ponies. Of course it was ponies. He liked ponies, but it wasn't for him. It was for her.
Samar was sitting at her desk, only a few feet in front of his, staring at pages of headlines and mugshots. Occasionally she checked some sort of forum. It looked like Reddit, but there were a lot of Disqus forums that used the same setup. Or it looked like it, at least, from this angle.
"Ponies?" Aram straightened up as he heard the booming voice from behind him, hitting the function buttons before thinking.
"Uh, nope." He said, flipping through his notes. "Anything you need me to do?" He asked before he looked up.
A dark man towered over his shoulder, staring at the screen. Not the usual person to lean over his shoulder. "Who…" He flung papers to the floor in his carelessness as he tried to get the Etsy search to fill the screen again, before pushing his chair away with a foot.
It was the man who had brought him to the criminal when he was going to be killed unless Aram stole all that money. The criminal had disassembled the gun so slowly, so carefully, as all Aram could think about was how to get money out of that bank and into a money laundering account before he could pull that trigger on a loaded gun.
And that man had just stood in the corner, watching.
He now studied the colorful array of plushies and crafts. The chair squeaked as Aram moved further away. The man stuck a finger to the screen. "Who's this?"
"Who? Uh…" Aram scratched his head as he mumbled the answer. Samar didn't have kids, did she? He knew Malik had, but he never bothered to ask Samar. She was hard to get a straight answer from.
The man leaned closer to him. Aram backed away. "Excuse me?"
"Pinkie Pie." Aram said.
"Oh." He searched the desk for the mouse, and then scrolled down the page slowly. "Is this… from a cartoon?" His deep voice echoed in the post office. Samar didn't notice the question.
"Y-Yes."
The man smiled as he kept scrolling. He watched the colorful pictures make their way up the screen. The post office was still eerily quiet, save for the yelling coming from the loft. Cooper and Mr. Reddington were having a lively conversation, probably about Agent Keen.
"A-" Aram swallowed. "Aren't you supposed to be up there? You know, with him?"
"No." The man answered. The clicking of the mouse wheel was the only other noise besides the hum of the servers and the muted yelling.
Aram got up out of his chair and slid it closer to the desk, and left for the watercooler. Leaving a strange person at a classified terminal was probably a mistake, but he was with Mr. Reddington, which meant he got to do whatever he wanted, mostly because Mr. Reddington got to do whatever he wanted.
The man was on a different page of the Etsy search when Aram returned. He was staring at cheap jewelry and fabric picture frames now. Wait, did those Fluttershy shoes come in a size 11?
"What were you looking for?" He asked, without looking up from the screen.
"Nothing." Aram mumbled.
"For your daughter?"
Samar's wavy hair moved as she started to turn her head back. "I-" Aram cleared his throat. "I don't have a daughter. I don't know how that got there."
The man followed his eyes to Samar, before looking back at Aram. He brought up a text pad on the high-end monitor. For her? He wrote.
Aram took a gulp of his water cup. "Yeah." He finally let out.
The man looked from the cartoon animals to Samar and back again. I have a female friend who might know what to get her. Kate. He typed.
"Who's that?" Aram asked without thinking. It was probably another criminal. The person he was talking to was probably a criminal.
She's from logistics. He wrote. Should I call her?
Aram thought about saying no, but thought better of it. "Sure."
The man pulled out an archaic Razor and began pressing buttons. He handed the phone to Aram as it was ringing.
Aram took the phone with a sigh and held it to his ear. "Hello?"
There was a pause before an older female began to speak. "What color is the sky?"
A security question. His first instinct was to hack it, and then he realized he wasn't sitting at a terminal. "Uh." He started. Colors. He wanted to say black, but this was Mr. Reddington's person, so it had to be "Red?"
"Is Dembe there?" She asked.
"Yes."
"So what kind of trouble has Ray dug himself into now?"
"No." Crap. "No. No. Sorry, it's not like that at all." Aram cleared his throat. "Sorry. My name's Aram Mojtabai. I work at the Post Office."
"So this is about Agent Keen then?"
"No. Well, she's got a problem, but that's not why I'm calling." Aram took a deep breath. "Dembe said you might know what to get as a present for a girl?"
"Oh." Kate said. She sighed heavily in the phone. "So that's all it is. Dembe."
"Yes. Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."
"No, it's fine. I'm used to it." The woman said. "You said your name was Aram?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"You can call me Mr. Kaplan."
"Of course, M-Mr. Kaplan. Sir." He stopped himself from apologizing. "So do you know what to get a girl? I mean, a woman?" Aram paced around the corner, to where he could still see the shadows moving in the loft office. Dembe was still scrolling through the pictures of cartoon crafts.
"Is she your girlfriend?" Mr. Kaplan asked.
"Uh. No." Aram said. "No. Not yet."
"I see." Mr. Kaplan said. "Have you tried giving her something from the heart?"
"What?"
"Making her something."
Samar was staring at a forum again on her monitor. Probably work. Hopefully work. Her name looked long, but Aram couldn't read from where he stood. "Making her what?" Aram asked.
"What does she like?"
It took him a moment to even think of anything. "Living."
"Always important in our business."
"She likes gadgets." Aram mused.
"I have to admit, Aram, I don't know very much about gadgets." Mr. Kaplan said. "Do you?"
"You could say that."
"Well then, do you think you could make her a gadget?" Mr. Kaplan asked.
"Yeah, it's just what kind of gadget she would like." Aram said.
Mr. Kaplan gave a small, throaty laugh. "I'm sure you'll think of something."