taxonomites | 057 ± [visual / location: around town] i like the autumn but this place is getting old

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057 ± [visual / location: around town] i like the autumn but this place is getting old

At roughly quarter to nine in the morning, Taxon is greeted with a video broadcast of a holo broadcast.

"Hello?"

One can tell it's not a proper arrival because instead of the usual stark arrival room, there's a tiny Glitch hovering over a nightstand. Beyond, there is a patchwork quilt covering a shifting, grumbling lump.

"DG...Cain?" From under the covers, Glitch's head emerges and he peers blearily at his tiny duplicate. "Raw?"

"Cute," he mumbles, the props his chin up to watch the show.

"Cain's going to be mad," the hologram remarks fussily. Glitch snorts. "But...no, it's not my fault this time. I was following him! I was following him! I was follow-"

"All right, enough of that." Glitch pokes his tablet so the holo replay of his arrival vanishes, then scowls when he notices that it's still broadcasting. "Guess that's the aliens' way of wishing me a happy anniversary. Morning, all."

Then he turns the tablet off and flops back with a sigh.

Three annuals. Thirty-six months. One hundred fifty-six weeks. Something like a thousand ninety-five days and he's still not sure how he survived the first dozen of them. Illyria'd basically pointed him at the door and he'd been on his own until DG's arrival. Adaptation. Coping. Moving on. Waiting and surviving, that was 90% of this place.

Today, though, he'll keep busy and distribute a few gifts. The first pumpkin from the garden for Cain with a short length of distinctive gold braiding tied around the stem. One of DG's sketchbooks for Azkadellia, a more intimate glimpse of the younger princess' life here. He's ready to let go, and he hopes it will give Az some comfort. The first volume of his organized notes on Taxon for Mayland, a drink or two with Paul after lunch, dropping a scarf off for Madelyne (the days are getting chillier and he frets), and then...then he'll take Bagoas out for dinner. Because why not.

He sends a voice message to his friend to make arrangements (Italian, Glitch decides, will be nice), gets ready for the day, loads a basket with goodies, and sets off on his bicycle to make the rounds.

ooc: THREE YEARS what even. He'll be stopping by to see everyone mentioned above (and all of that's hadnwavey if you like), but anyone not mentioned is totally welcome to bump into him too. OPEN POST IS OPEN.

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"Ozian," Glitch corrects absently, giving Paul a little side-eye. "But yeah, they are. I'd've thought that'd come up at some point, they're pets of the sorceress."

And of princesses temporarily possessed by the Sorceress via alien intervention, like what happened last spring when Glitch was busy ~~not getting thanked for some fairly epic life-saving~~ having his brain mucked with again.

"They probably won't throw 'em at us again but if they do...we've got it handled, don't worry about it."

"Ozian," Paul accedes while digging out his cigarettes. The next bit makes him give a tired sort of half-laugh.

"I can just about parse the things about the OZ like the historical tranny sovereign and the fact that it's a world where magic is really super-di-duper common. My brain shuts down at things like 'sorceress' and 'munchkin land' and 'flying monkeys'. So if I'd heard that bit about the monkeys, I'm going to write it off as something I repressed."

He shrugs once. Monkeys are in the Ozzies' courtyard, cool. Works for him. Paul lights his cigarette.

"There's a lot my brain can't parse about the OZ," he says after a few seconds. "I guess it probably-- it must-- go both ways. But you all seem to do a decent job acclimating to our things, our holidays and crap like that."

Patience. Patince patience patience. Paul will talk, and it will be vaguely insulting to and dismissive of Glitch's entire homeland, and he'll mentally count to 109 using only prime number and also sip his drink a bit. And wish the cigarette were something he could repress.

"Slippers from...Earth to the O.Z. are more common than the other way around," he explains. "So peoploem and objects come over and it influences stuff. Plus, you know, after the first annual or so here you start picking up on things. We're adaptable."

Taxon's Othersidecentrism: still annoying.

There's this fractional pause before Glitch's response, and something measured to Glitch's response as well that brings Paul up a moment.

He watches Glitch from the corner of his eyes and takes a drag on his cigarette. Paul Smecker's many things, but tuned for the details has always been one of them.

He twists on the bar stool until he's fully facing Glitch, at least. The other man has changed a fuck-of-a-lot since that first meeting, dressing room and 'vampires' and Paul's manic attempts to cope with the fact the guy has a zipper on his head by means of a filked song.

Yeah, Glitch has changed. Paul almost never hears him stammer any more.

It's a deeper change than that, of course. Way deeper. Icebergs, and lack of stammers just that 10% visible.

"I'm not," Paul says after a few seconds of silent study of Glitch. "Adaptable, that is. My world's got pretty rigid rules and I lost my shit the first time they got severely challenged there; Taxon's something else entirely. The Zone is something else entirely.

"Why do you think They only pick a handful of people from the Zone, and so many from iterations of the Other Side?" Paul asks, brows slightly furrowed, watching Glitch intently.

The fun part about this iceberg is that Glitch isn't even sure how much is under the surface since it all goes dark and murky after a bit. What's clear is he's more reserved, thoughtful, and endlessly more self-aware.

Which should help him reserve judgement, think things over, and maybe extend that awareness to others. He returns Paul's scrutiny with a little half-smile, then nods.

"All right," he says on the matter of adapability. "I'll keep that in mind. As for Taxon demographics..."

He picks up his drink for a sip and fusses with his napkin. "It might be down to scale. The O.Z.'s tiny, like-" He covers a corner of the napkin with the tip of a fingernail. "Probably about that big, whereas your world, well, that's the rest of the napkin."

And he would have gone on and on about the different layers of the napkin representing different versions of Earth but no, that's totally a Mayland conversation and gets filed away for later.

"Really I think we're overrepresented now. Like...what, sixteen percent of the population?"

Paul watches Glitch's little example with the fingers and the napkin, still with that slight frown of concentration on his face, popping his chin onto one hand and drumming his fingers against his cheek.

"You noticed they seem to go in phases?" he asks. "Like we'll get runs of people who know each other-- maybe from different times, but they're from something like the same place-- and then nobody else from those worlds ever again. And some of these places must be their favorites-- there's that place, uh, Sunnydale? --no, Vale, Sunnyvale, we've had to have had at least ten people from there.

"I was phrasing it to myself for a long time that I was a control, because my Earth, or my Otherside, or whatever we want to call it: I don't have people like Summers-- any of the Summers, either the eye-blasty one or the little blond monster hunter one-- or people like Stark or people like Godric or Jenny or..."

Paul shrugs one shoulder. The gone are gone. "Anyway, I don't think I'm a control group anymore. In the first place, a little my-world centric of a view, to think I'm the 'normal'. In the second place, I think it's just because my world's boring. Comparatively."

Which is the rub, the point such as it is. The tenuous grip on a theory that he's been shaping over his time here. "They want... I mean, we say a lot we're here to amuse them, but-- but I think it's true, on some fundamental level. They want-- they want good stories."

Paul looks into his glass a moment, shrugs, has a sip. "So maybe-- in that logic-- the Zone is this... I don't know, this great storyland. It's always sounded like a story to me, a fairy tale. I don't mean that dismissively. I mean it's got what would be the trappings of Story in my world. So maybe that's why there's this higher proportion of people from your place.

"Tell me to fuck off if I'm not making sense."

And in return Glitch listens, nodding to show understanding, frowning as he considers a new concept, taking another sip of his drink for the hell of it.

"I dunno if you're - or your world is - boring." A zillion other adjectives, of course, considering his limited exposure to it all. "But that's my perspective. It's just..."

He's spent so long grappling with all the theories that he's not even sure he cares anymore.

"I think you're right, that they do want stories. That's how all those people from Buffy's world all know each other, or of each other. They want that continuity. Like they could've plucked up a green grocer, a lawyer, and the town drunk from the O.Z. Instead they got both princesses, me, and Cain. People who mean stuff to each other."

They're getting hilariously close to figuring out the aliens' MO here.

Edited (typo annoyed me) 2012-10-31 19:32 (UTC)

"Yeah," Paul says, and stares at his drink. "Yeah."

(Except why not Connor and Murphy, save for the nightmare, awful versions of them, and why not....)

But nothing's saying you don't come to care for those who are here. You really, really do, which can be part of the problem, meet someone and get your heart and head stuck into some stupid bullshit and any given moment they could be gone, back to wherever.

If you're lucky they're from your world; if you're lucky they're someone you might have a chance of seeing again. Paul thinks about DG, and he thinks about Cain, and the stupidity of words like 'home'.

Fuck the 'why'. They're here, until they're not. And while they're here they have to make the most of it.

Paul rotates his glass a few more times on the bar.

"....look, Glitch."

Pause. Words. Word this. Translate from normal Paul-speak which is something like Fuck the fuck off my not-boyfriend, or go bone with my grudging blessing or something, but one-or-the-fucking-other, CHRIST into something that won't break things, that won't start fights, because what he is with Wyatt is worth keeping and Glitch is important to Wyatt and they're all stuck here. Make the most of it.

Paul opens his mouth then shuts it then opens it and says, "Can I ask you some questions about things in the Zone?"

And that, as they say, is that. Mysteries inside riddles, and Glitch is actually more comfortable talking about the O.Z. than Taxon's...thing where it's inscrutable.

Thought honestly his memories of his home are murky. He read a lot in the palace library, he's occasionally asked Cain for details, but--

"Sure," he says with a nod curious little smile. "Always happy to help."

Always happy to help. Sure. Sure. Of course he is. Paul raises his glass for a sip, still weighing words to himself. Don't fuck this up.

"Okay. So." ...another vodka sip. "Right-- so-- context here-- in my world, well, no, my country in my world--" (even when he's not entirely at his most eloquent, Paul feels the need to be scrupulously honest about the cultural quirks he's relating, and hey, America isn't all of Earth)

"--in my home, if two men are going to do a lot of physical contact-- embracing, kissing, that sort of.... intimacy.... it's like a ninety-nine-point-nine percent chance that this indicates sexual interest."

Paul says this all a little fast, eyes fixated on the bar wall and the bottles and not looking at Glitch.

"I'm pretty sure it's different in the Zone. Pretty sure. Can you-- confirm that for me? Just, uh. Indulge some fucking neuroses here on my part?"

And all of that honesty gets a sort of quizzical, baffled expression. What's...oh.

A firm hand in his, or on the back of his neck, a shoulder to lean on, a solid someone to put his arm around when he needs it. Jokes, nudges, sometimes a nuzzle, bright-eyed looks, holding tight and not wanting to let go.

Glitch looks deep into his glass and into his own soul, more than likely thinking way too hard but then it's a question he's not sure he can answer. Is it different? Is it him, them, this place, what they've gone through? How does he feel, really?

Does he love Cain? Absolutely and without question. In love with him? Quite probably, after a fashion, with the sort of agape, ridiculous devotion that shorts out his common sense. There had been a time when he'd first gotten his marbles assembled and he'd finally understood the depth of those emotions, and it had all gotten muddled but...no. Not like that, not in this life. What they have is something else, something different.

"I don't know if it's--" Okay, drink, go again. "I can't confirm if it's cultural, I don't...remember. But I do know that's how it is for us." And, quite bravely, he glances over to Paul. "Should we...talk about that?"

Oh-kay, good, neither of them are yelling yet. Paul thinks that's tentatively good. Right? Right?

Maybe it's not just Wyatt who can short out all his preconceptions. Glitch does it pretty good too, with the cautious question back. So maybe it's an OZ thing.

Maybe it's a fucking Paul thing and he needs to stop living on defense.

Paul runs his fingers through his hair to rake it back from his face and offers Glitch a toothache sort of smile in return.

"Okay." Stupid sort of word, 'okay'. "I... no, I don't know that we need to talk about it, your word's good, I mean, if it's not like that, then it's not like that. I can chalk shit up to my own paranoid neuroses and work on kicking that in the ass, that's fine."

I believe you. I think. Maybe.

Could be any of that. Or it could just be associating with people who are honest a good majority of the time.

And of course because of that (and because it's Glitch and babbling is still what he does), the second he's told there's no need to talk about it Glitch decides he really does need to lay it all out for both of them. If knowledge is power then sharing knowledge empowers others. Or something.

"Yeah, that's--" Drink? Yes. Slide glass out for refill? Yes some more. "Good that it's fine, but for the sake of your paranoid neuroses..."

He sighs, and as he talks he unfolds and refolds the poor napkin. "When I first met Cain - and DG and Raw - I-- they were the first ones to care, to treat me like a person in I have no idea how long. I imprinted on them like a duckling, and everything we went through back home and here...I need them. Him.

"We're...friends, family, I dunno if there's a better word for it." He scowls at the inadequacy of language. "How's this: I'd live, die, a-and kill for him, Paul, bit I'm not your competition."

It definitely could be that one.

Paul gestures for the bartender to come hit up Glitch's glass, the guy was already on the way but still. He twists on the barstool to keep his eyes on Glitch while he says what he says.

'Duckling.' Oh yeah he can see that one. Imagine it clear. Paul schools his face to listen, to bite back on asshole comments for once in his life.

Glitch finishes and he takes a breath and a swallow of his drink too, a little-too-ambitious of one but hey.

"It was more I was wondering if I needed to draw up a poly contract," he says in what even he can hear is a really lame attempt at a wisecrack. Chriiist. Deep breath, and Paul studies the bar's ceiling (too clean, his brain notes) a second before he gives a nod.

"Okay. Yeah."

Paul stares at his glass for a moment. "At the risk of turning this into maudlin fucking o'clock-- I'm-- sort of in the habit of expecting people to pick their family over me. It's an Otherside thing, and a bullshit thing, and it's not your problem, it's mine, but... I'll deal with it. Like an ostensible grownup. Thanks for indulging the paranoia."

Paul puffs his cheeks up with air, then lets it out.

"He's lucky to have family like you."

It should be, and DG, but DG is gone, gone, DG's gone and Glitch got left and he has to start over again and again, that's what Paul's gathered is the sum of Glitch's life and what do you even say to that? Hey, sorry shit sucks for your partially lobotomized self?

Man, fuck Taxon and its enforced perspective.

"Nah, that's all right. I think I can only juggle one of those at a time."

Ha. Ha ha. What is his life. Still with the listening though because this is important, possibly the most significant conversation they've ever had. Glitch sips his refilled drink since he feels he's said his most important piece, something he's been formulating for an annual or so and...yeah. All squared away.

Except for the part where he has to give Paul a rather confused look again and scrunch his brow up a lot for good measure.

"And you," he points out, gesturing with his glass. "Cuz you are, which I guess makes us...I dunno. In-laws."

Which come to think of it sort of explains rather a lot, after a fashion.

Paul stares blankly a moment at Glitch after he says that. Then laughs. A little helplessly, a little bit of a hiccup to it; he puts his forehead down on his forearms and giggles (no other word for it really) for ten seconds or so until he manages to take a breath and lift his head again.

"Jesus Christ. You're right. Oh, we're so fucked."

~~Paul has such a high opinion of families.~~

He offers Glitch this helpless, reckless sort of grin. "We have to swear blood oaths not to talk about politics, now."

"I'm a socialist monarchist."

Glitch says it anyway, because it needs to be established and because that's what family does. And really he is totally reluctant and yes they are, to put it Smeckerly, utterly and intensely fucked, but that's how it is. You never, ever, ever choose your family.

He sips his drink demurely, feels his face going a little numb and flags the bartender for a glass of water. He'll need to keep it together, he'll go home after this and get ready and have a proper date with Bagoas ad Things and Stuff. Such is life.

"So...I think we've got all that covered. Anymore details or whatever, you need to talk to Cain."

"No. Yes. I mean, that's fair," Paul says with a wave of his hand, acknowledging all that. He wonders if maybe he shouldn't have been drinking vodka while waiting for Glitch. Hindsight.

"...Glitch..." Paul gives his glass another rotation on the bar. "You didn't have to come with Cain after my ass during Nightmare Theatre 3000."

Yeah well Glitch has been putting the spirits away too and well--

Okay invoking That Particular Thing even though Glitch has already done so after a fashion unsettles him. He reels a bit, doing the whole pausing and blinking thing he did before he got his brain back. Trauma.

"No. I didn't." Driiiink. "O-or I did, I did have to, I couldn't leave him and--"

Eyes close, focus inward, deep breath and move on. "I had to even the odds. I I mean. What if I hadn't?" Pause. "No, I mean, you know."

Paul watches Glitch sidelong, and nods. He uses his fingertips to push his glass a little further away from him on the bar. Unbidden, maybe unnoticed, his other hand drifts to one of the bullet scars hidden under clothing.

"I know."

Paul cracks his knuckles once, studies his glass.

"Thank you. I never said it. Was busy blood-loss-ing and all and then I was busy trying to drive Wyatt insane. But... thank you. I owe you one."

Glitch notices, vaguely, and his eyes dart to the faint scar on the back of his own left hand and away again. There are worse - the burns from before and he always has to fight acknowledging them in Azkadellia's presence - but that little white mark...

"I was too busy running away to accept," he replies with a little shrug. "And you're welcome, I--" He chuckles, shakes his head. "I'll try and not collect on that. You know--"

"I owe you one" is exactly and to the word what Cain told me after I saved him from hypothermia and the hilarious irony of hearing it from you, now, when the whole saving-you-from-crazy-Irish-guys was 90% for him to begin with, is a little too funny for me to deal with.

"...knowing this place it'll happen sooner or later. Pre-emptive thank you for that."

"Yeah." Paul nods. He picks up on some of what's not being said, not all of that, but yeah. Some of it.

Paul studies the bottle. They've made serious inroads. Maybe a little too serious, he's not too sure he trusts his balance.

"....yeah. Uh. I wonder if Taxon taxis will actually come if you call." He's never tried before.

And that'll be that. A clear sing to end, a good place to start, or start over, or continue or...

Yeah, he'll probably be walking his bike home.

"It's pretty much fifty-fifty," Glitch offers and glances at the ceiling. "An' then if they do come there's a fifty-fifty chance of a language barrier, for some reason."

Because the aliens are trolls. "I could walk you, 'least part of the way."

Paul laughs, a little raucous. The language barrier thing makes perfect sense to him, at least.

He collects the bottle; he paid for it dammit, and wobbles to his feet. Oh-kay. Balance. Yeah. Counter is good. Great.

"Sounds like a plan," he says with a sloppy reckless smile at Glitch. "If we both faceplant on the sidewalk, I'll use your hair as a cushion."

"It's just about bouncy enough," Glitch says and gets to his own feet. Wobble wobble, preternatural poise will only go so far.

"All th' same, I'd rather avoid all faceplanting. Gotta be pretty for my date."

Stop talking. Stop talking now.

057 ± [visual / location: around town] i like the autumn but this place is getting old

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