middaeg | fellas is it gay if you can magically read your best bros thoughts (OPEN)

Entry tags:

fellas is it gay if you can magically read your best bros thoughts (OPEN)

Who: Rich and others
When: Morning and noonish, November 15
Where: Jeremy, Rich, and Michael's home
What: Rich and Jeremy's Bonding ceremony and celebration
Warnings: none

i. Bonding (Closed)

[Jeremy shows up at Rich's door bright and early the next morning. Despite how Rich claimed that suits weren't required, Jeremy still put together the nicest-looking thing in his wardrobe. His hair is slicked back, his skin is clearer than usual (where did he find concealer?), and he's used up a good chunk of his precious deodorant that he brought with him through the mirror.

The SQUIP had a lot of drawbacks, being an evil mind-controlling robot and all, but it taught Jeremy a valuable lesson: Jeremy cleans up good.

When Rich opens the door, Jeremy's waiting expectantly, hands behind his back and bouncing on his toes. It's clear that he's been there a while.]

You ready to go?

ii. Announcement (Open)

[To announce their Bond and to celebrate, Rich and Jeremy have opened the house up for any and everyone who wants to check it out--both quietly not mentioning how empty the space seems with Justine's recent disappearance. At Rich's suggestion, they've sent an open invitation out on the watch network to anyone who wants to drop by and offer congratulations.

Their budget isn't huge, but Jeremy's insistence on hospitality means that they've got enough finger food and drinks for people to try out. There's no alcohol.

Jeremy's still nervous even though the deed is done, so he's bustling around constantly to make sure that everything is perfectly neat, that they've got enough seats, and that nobody needs a refill. In his rush, bringing a hot tray of cookies from the oven straight onto a serving tray, he bumps into you. As he turns around to see who he's plowed over, he rushes to apologize. The niceties run into themselves before he even sees your face.]

Shoot--I'm sorry--thanks for coming!

iii. Wildcard (Open)

[Jeremy and Rich are both available to talk about their new bond with your character. Let me know if you want a specific situation!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Laughing during a performance. My girlfriend does it all the time.

[Yes, Jeremy still gets butterflies saying "my girlfriend," but we're moving past it.

Jeremy gives L an odd look as he keeps talking.]

That's why they smoke weed, you mean?

[He's genuinely only giving a go at translating.]

[L blinks, looking puzzled for a moment.]

Aren't you... meant to laugh during a performance? At least if it's a comedy? Except... ah. No, if you're acting in the play, and the character is not meant to laugh but your own emotions aren't under control, I can see how that would be a problem. It makes sense; it's the logical progression from "breaking a leg", in that the facetious advice wasn't heeded and you instead figuratively "died" onstage in an undesirable and embarrassing manner, and became a corpse. That's... the intended meaning, I'm sure?

[It had damn well better be after all that effort to reason it out.]

I'm glad your girlfriend isn't actually a corpse. That would be a problem. And also sad.

[He nods, head bobbing briskly behind the puppet. He still won't say "smoke." He doesn't want to get yelled at again today for voicing anything related to fire.]

Edited 2019-11-20 05:31 (UTC)

[These odd deductive tangents are starting to become familiar.]

I only know that's what it's called when you laugh on accident, dude, but that all sounds right to me. My girlfriend Christine is an actor. Lots of serious roles. She's been Juliet before so it's okay if she were corpsing more literally...

In the context of the story, only, obviously. She's actually the liveliest person you'll ever meet.

[L knows what Christine looks like thanks to his Bond with the SQUIP and the memories that have traveled across it. He still pictures Misa Amane, and sort of can't help it. Really, if ever a hyperactive Pomeranian were put into the body of a petite Japanese girl with bleached-blonde hair...

He shudders, just slightly. Almost imperceptibly.]

And you don't find that overwhelming? Lively people can be... excitable, or loud, or... apt to initiate physical contact sans warning.

[It's L's way of observing that they kind of contrast each other on paper.]

Oh, no. After all the time I spent staring at her and imagining her so much as brushing against my arm in the hallway, I don't think I'm gonna be mad at her hugging me.

[Jeremy is selective in his list of who can grab him out of the blue. Christine is the top of that list alongside Michael.]

She's loud and excitable and it's so infectious that it makes you want to go act stupid and smile about nothing and it leaves you breathless. She feels everything so much and when she's around, you can't help but feel it too. I wish you could meet her sometime.

I guess you really like her.

[Jeremy's puppet is still being held in front of L's face. Maybe it's actually easier for him to talk this way, even if he's not "in-character" as Jeremy. Either that, or he's concerned about being filmed again, and just preparing for every possible way his identity could be compromised and spread around.]

If I met her it would mean that she was brought here. Is... that really something you want?

No, of course not. I don't want her to be stuck here.

Although... actually, maybe she'd be into it. All the magic and the other creatures and stuff. She'd probably take this place over in a day and turn it into a utopia. Maybe she'd like that more than going to an arts college.

[He bobs his Rich puppet.]

She'd probably fix all the fights here too. She kicks ass at conflict resolution 'cause she cuts right through BS but she's super empathetic. And she's really adaptable so she'd do great as a Witch or any Monster.

[Jeremy trails off, imagining Christine as different Monsters. A cute tail is mandatory.]

Can I change my answer?

[L considers, very seriously, before giving a wide-eyed, emphatic nod.]

When you show your work, isn't it just a lot of changing answers on the way to the correct one? I always consider that when I'm grading things, at least.

[So much of the fragments L tells Jeremy in particular about his life just raise more questions. Perhaps he counts on Jeremy not to be perceptive or persistent enough to pursue them, giving him some sort of freedom to actually hint at honesty. Maybe that's refreshing; lies have been his defense against attack and death since as long as he can remember.]

[No one's ever called L stupid. Jeremy... more than once.

It's not that Jeremy doesn't notice or remember the little things L says, but he doesn't always follow up on them, especially if he's not expected to.]

You must mean math. Math, you've got to show your work, which is a pain in the ass because, [he taps the base of his neck,] it's easier to get the number like a calculator shows it.

English, if you start off with a thesis statement and by the end of the paper you've changed your mind, you get a D.

[Jeremy's earnest enough to make it obvious that he speaks from experience.]

But the thesis is, Christine's great and everyone loves her and you should too, the end.

I mean... anyone can calendar count, or multiply three-digit numbers in their head.

[Fuck you, L, no they can't.]

But showing your work is imperative in anything reliant on deductive reasoning. Any logical progression of thought, in any reasoning study or pursuit... requires an explanation of process. Especially if you want it to make sense to other people. Regarding your English paper... I disagree fundamentally. If you start off with a thesis statement and write a persuasive argument that changed your own mind, it was an extremely effective argument. Alter your thesis statement slightly and retool a few paragraphs, make sure that your conclusion reflects the evolution of your reasoning, and you have an A.

[L actually sort of peers around the side of the Jeremy puppet. Eyes that are so often dreamlike and distant with an absentminded affectation are sharp and focused, now.]

It's touching that you love her. But I'm not good with people... and my thesis statement is that disappointment is the failure of reality to live up to expectations. If you meet an enemy, who introduces himself to you as an enemy, and he tries to stab you the first chance he gets... it isn't disappointing, because you always expected that. If someone introduces himself to you as a friend, and then tries to stab you... maybe you end up dead. Such matters are not merely disappointing, but potentially devastating, and my conclusion is that everyone has a knife, and everyone is willing to stab you if their motivation is sufficient. Always expect it, and you can never be disappointed.

Anyway, mm. Christine sounds. Nice.

[Jeremy hears "showing your work" and his eyes start to glaze over. But he fights it. He does. He tries. He comes back around once they're talking about Christine and not schoolwork.]

Well. I get what you're saying but I'm squishy in the middle. No matter what the guy who stabs me says, I'm gonna get stabbed at the end of the day. It's not like I've got armor on that I unequip around friends.

And if knives are a hazard of your everyday life, that's not even an betrayal at that point. It's not that your friend betrayed you. It's that you're living on a planet of murderers with knives.

Like how Syndrome put it. "When everyone's super, no one will be." But with knives. "When everyone's stabby, no one will be." That's my new thesis.

Christine only uses prop knives, so it's sort of the opposite of a friend betraying you with a surprise knife. It's a knife... betraying you with a surprise friend.

[L feels this a lot, actually, the sense that what he's saying to someone else just isn't registering. He pushes through, anyway, because maybe it at least helps him to articulate it somehow. Organizes all that mental energy into something streamlined, coherent and productive.

...and then he's the one who's lost. His brow furrows behind the puppet, and he sounds a little bemused when he replies.]

You're positing... that danger and exceptionality are meaningless without relativity? That neither of those things can exist in a vacuum and it's pointless to evade the former or aspire to the latter unless others are doing the same?

[Maybe Jeremy does get that life is one big cutthroat competition.]

Y--n--maybe?

[He bobs the puppet in the air as if he's counting L's words and trying to section them off.]

There's all kinds of precautions you can take and there's a million things out there that can kill you. Expecting everyone you meet to stab you makes as much sense as expecting no one to do something bad to you ever. And sometimes the things you try to protect yourself are...

[He frowns looking away.]

They're more dangerous than what you're trying to prevent.

You go for the extreme scenarios a lot, huh?

[L nods, again with that strange emphatic earnestness that is almost childlike.]

Exceptional circumstances are the things you read about in the newspaper. They're in the newspaper because they're exceptional, that is... outside of what an ordinary person could reasonably expect to happen in their lives. But they happen daily, to someone. Even if your chances of being the victim of a murder might be individually very low... the truth is that murders are committed every day. And if there's a murder, there's a 100% chance that someone was a victim.

[Kind of like L, actually. The man would be shocked to know how little Jeremy actually realizes about him, given that in little shards and pieces, he's told Jeremy so much about his life. But these things, too, are relative, and if one doesn't know or guess that the many disparate pieces of colored paper confetti in their hands form a cohesive picture, no one could really blame them for not trying to make some sense of it.]

Edited 2019-11-22 05:14 (UTC)

[Newspapers are not quite vintage enough for Jeremy to care about them.]

Ye-es... Bad things happen. A very statistically unlikely bad thing happened to me.

[Jeremy's lost track of L's thinking--or at least why he's so intensely focused on this topic out of seemingly nowhere.]

I'm sorry, I don't know what you're getting at.

Oh. Yes, uh. I can see that.

[He nods, ducking his head in an almost apologetic manner.]

If your focus is an individual, the fear is irrational because it's so incredibly unlikely. But if the phenomenon is your focus... your days are filled with death, and it's inevitable, and it has to become impersonal, or you'll go crazy. No one can care about that many lives on an individual level; empathy is a finite resource for even those who are very kind. Does... that make more sense to you?

Yes. I've read the Batman comics where he sets people on fire. I know the whole good of the many stuff.

[L's not trying to hide what his profession might have been now, not in a general sense.]

So it's not really you who's afraid of getting stabbed by your friends. You're afraid other people's friends will stab them?

[The metaphor might be falling apart.]

[L's framing it obtusely, but it's true that he's also edging a lot closer to that one major truth that reels all the rest of them together into that coherent picture.]

I don't have any friends...

[Not entirely true; there are a few people in Aefenglom who would willingly adopt and use that title. But L is speaking from the larger portion of his perspective, an overwhelmingly isolated time that left him crippled in casual, innocent encounters.]

And "afraid" isn't the right word. It's all very inevitable, so long as humans remain humans.

[L gets an odd look for saying so.]

Okay. So you're, like, bummed at the general state of humanity. And the existence of evil and everything.

But isn't it, uh... You know what they say. "There's a better place, but there's no way to get from here to there except by joining hands, marching together." Something like that.

[L finally lowers the puppet and looks Jeremy straight in the face. The hollow contours of his cheeks and eyes give him a wan and haunted and extremely tired appearance. It had almost disappeared when the conversation was a little more cheery and silly, a state that L isn't often allowed to inhabit. When he is, it never lasts very long.]

No. I don't know that saying.

[He did say, a moment ago, that he had no friends. There's no one to march with him except a computer.]

[Jeremy's cheeks redden.]

Oh, I thought--sorry, it's one of those prayers they do every week.

[He notices the look of exhaustion. He almost wants to offer to try to heal L again. Maybe with a Bond it won't be as disastrous this time?]

Hey, do you want some punch? You don't look great.

[He shakes his head, brisk, almost like a tic.]

It's been years. I don't remember any prayers.

[He nods. Punch sounds like a pretty good idea, right about now, even if it's non-alcoholic and therefore not as good for pushing down that empty darkness at his core.]

[Jeremy puffs out his cheeks.]

I'm not good at 'em either. I can't even read most of the Hebrew so don't feel bad.

[He says it as he's walking away, tucking the puppet under his arm. He returns with a glass of punch and a cupcake to boot, holding it out.]

Blood sugar or something, right?

Hebrew, I actually do remember.

[He slips the puppet off, setting it aside, eyes on Jeremy the whole time he's away fetching refreshments. He accepts them when the teen returns, long fingers fidgeting with the cupcake's paper wrapping.]

...or something. Yes.

[Explaining his issues with food aren't ever going to be a straightforward, easy, or sane process.]

Thanks.

'Welcome.

[Jeremy picks the other puppet up.]

Thanks for these. I'm sure Rich'll get a kick out of them.

I'm gonna get back to the kitchen... but hey, man. Thanks for coming.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

fellas is it gay if you can magically read your best bros thoughts (OPEN)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject