kore_logs | [open] a friend in need's a friend indeed

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[open] a friend in need's a friend indeed

Who: Ned and OPEN
What: Random encounters & fallout from dream-walking tomfoolery
Where: House 20, the garden, anywhere around town
When: Day 89

It's been a long week. A long, mostly-sleepless, weird week during which Ned has seen far more of his friends' and neighbors' subconsciouses than he would have liked to. Plus, a creepy city made of crystals that everyone seems to have seen, but no one will claim as their own. Shady stuff. Today, he is determined to wear himself out. Perhaps if he's tired enough, whatever mojo the men behind the curtain have put on him won't be strong enough to stir him out of a deep and dreamless sleep.

It's probably a futile tactic, but he can't just do nothing.

So he is a bustle of activity - cleaning the house, walking around town, checking on the crops to see if they are holding up well (carefully, with an eye for any enterprising tigers roaming too close to the edge of the forest), keeping an eye out for new faces and an ear out for rumors of missing ones.

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Ned bites his bottom lip, half-tempted to caution Charlie to do absolutely whatever it takes to get out of the next one. As if Charlie couldn't figure that out, himself. Why be ominous, why talk about just how bad it's going to be? Charlie might not even remember when (and if) he gets returned home, and the only result will be potentially making him sick with worry while he's here.

Ned hopes he does come up with something, though. Hopes he doesn't have to live through it personally. He likes Charlie, considers him a friend. Doesn't want to think about him in some uniform with a gun, dying in the middle of nowhere, a single casualty amongst the thousands and the millions. He rubs a hand over his eyes, tries not to worry about things that he has no power to control.

Charlie helps him in that process with his next comment, which has Ned going bright red in the face. Meyer had been extraordinarily delicate in his questions and speculations about Ned's relationship with Daneel. Charlie is... not so much.

"I don't think of myself as putting up with it," he says, because he's not going to comment one way or another on the sex, thanks. "It is a little crazy, sometimes, the things he doesn't know about my time, and the things I don't know about his. But we manage. Just like we manage even though he's a robot and I'm a human." That, more than anything, has been the biggest hurdle between the two of them, but they've been working on it, haven't been letting it get in their way.

"Wait, hold on a fucking second. The fuck you mean, a robot?" He's heard the word before, some play AR wanted to go see or something, and he's pretty sure it's not just some nickname he hasn't heard before.

"I mean..." Ned begins but catches himself. There's something in Charlie's tone that gives him pause. Something that's less like incredulity and more like genuine confusion.

After how upset Charlie had just been saying he is about feeling like he's in the dark about so much, about knowledge he doesn't have access to just because of when he's from, Ned wants to be cautious. So before he answers one way or another he asks.

"Is that... disbelief, or are you really asking me what a robot is?"

He racks his brain for where he heard that word before. Dammit, Meyer is s much better at this.

"I dunno. It's some science-fiction shit, ain't it?"

Oh. Ned hadn't really foreseen this complication. He ought to have, and his own oversight helps him to understand, more immediately and deeply, Charlie's earlier frustrations at everyone being from a later time period than himself.

And now he has to figure out how to explain what Daneel is to Charlie, without sounding condescending, but without confusing him either.

"In your time, and my time, yes. By his time, it's science, but not the fictional kind. He's..." Where does Ned even begin, "He wasn't born, like you or I were born, or like a cat or a dog is born. He was made. Designed and put together and activated, by scientists, using very advanced technology. From the outside he looks exactly like a human being, because... that was the whole point. But underneath he's a bit different. You and I are organic." No, that's probably not going to be helpful. Ned changes tactics, "Basically, we're mostly made of meat. But he's mostly made of metal. He doesn't have to do stuff like eat or sleep because he has a different sort of power source."

There are other nuances, important ones, but he's starting with the basics here. They can get to postironics later, when Charile's ready, and if he's interested.

Yes this may take some time to all sink in. He stares at Ned openly for a while, brain trying to work through exactly how that works. Metal men, who look the same as normal people from the outside. Sounds like a fucking nightmare.

His brain can't help but wonder exactly how the sex works, either. Admire his restraint at not asking.

"That sure is one fucking mess."

He's not surprised Charlie is staring at him with overt disbelief and confusion and surprise. Ned, after all, had a frame of reference for robots, and he had gaped like a guppy when he'd first met Daneel. He'd thought - he remembers with a retroactive warmth - that he was being pranked.

"What about it seems like a mess to you?"

Because it's not - not to Ned's mind, anyway, but he can't know what's going on in Charlie's brain unless he says it out loud. He, unlike a couple of notable people around here, is not a mind-reader.

"The guy you're seeing being made outta metal seems a little like a real fucking mess, yeah." Alright, so he's stuck on that part. But the rest is just a little too much to fully grasp yet.

Ned understands that the concept must be strange to Charlie, but all the same, he doesn't see it as all that much of a disaster. He finds himself compelled to justify himself, to explain to Charlie that it isn't quite so bizarre as he seems to find it.

"So he's a bit different," Ned says, with a shrug of his shoulders, burying his hands in his pockets, "It's not exactly like I'm Mr. Normal." In fact, Daneel is probably more normal by plenty of peoples' standards. Highly advanced technology is more logical than strange and inexplicable resurrection powers.

"It's not messy at all. It's the opposite." Ned's voice is slipping from worried justification into open affection, now, and a smile starts to tug at the corner of his mouth, "We get each other. He makes me happy, and I think I make him happy. So what does it matter what he's made of? What matters is that he's patient, and kind, and affectionate, and interesting, and gentle. He's like if you took a quiet sunny spring afternoon spent eating strawberries on a boat in the middle of a lake full of lily-pads and turned it into a person."

Okay maybe that metaphor had gotten away from him a little bit.

Dear god, Ned. He's pretty sure if you tried to be any sweeter you'd transform into some sort of giant sugar monster.

"Wow. Sure sounds real fucking magical."

It'd be hard to miss that bite of sarcasm in Charlie's voice; it dampens Ned's enthusiasm, makes the bright smile on his face wilt and drop away. Charlie looks entirely unmoved by his description. Is his disapproval a newfound prejudice against robots - even though he only found out what they were a few minutes ago? Or is it directed at Ned himself, at his mooning and swooning and generally undignified behavior?

Either way, it disperses that mist of romance that had started to creep in at the edges of Ned's mind, making him more expansive, more honest, more relaxed. There's a certain stiffness to the way he straightens his back and shrugs his shoulders - nowhere near actually aggressive, but subtly irked.

"So you disapprove?" he asks, voice now bland and neutral in a way that immediately betrays the fact that he isn't really feeling all that bland or neutral.

Charlie throws his hands up, wishing once again he still had a cigarette. It makes gesturing so much more effective.

"Hey, pal, don't get me wrong, got nothing against true loves or whatever you wants to call it. Just ain't never seen it up close before. You sure got it real fucking bad, don't yous?"

Charlie's attempting to stay open minded about it, but as far as he can tell any time one of his buddies used to get like that over some girl it never ended fucking well for them. Half the married couples he knew were some one-night fling that ended up with much longer consequences. He'd gotten to a phase in life he was certain that kinda love was something people made up to sell tickets to the pictures.

That... certainly wasn't the answer Ned was expecting. So it isn't the human-and-robot aspect of it (or, obviously, the man-and-man aspect) that's off-putting to Charlie, but simply the ardency of his attachment?

"I guess I do." Charlie says this with suspicion, with caution, as if it's some kind of prison sentence rather than a small miracle. A cynic, then. Like Meyer, though different enough in the way he expressed it. Meyer had asked him if it was possible, had asked what it felt like to be in love, and to be loved in return. Charlie, on the other hand, is giving him that look like he's a chump at a carnival thinking he stands a shot at the ring toss when the game is rigged against him.

"Truth is, I was hardly even interested in anyone before he came along." And by interested, he does mean sexually attracted, but Ned and Charlie aren't really close enough for him to phrase things quite that baldly just yet. "So it's all a bit new to me."

That's some excuse, right? He's living through the follies of teenage attraction and infatuation and love, but a decade or so late.

"Yeah? At least someone's finding some good outta this fucking place, huh?" Tossing stones was a good way to keep his hands busy, earlier, so he picks up another one and throws it into the waves, less aggressively this time.

Ned wants to just agree, to let Charlie see what he and Daneel have found as someone else's silver lining, but it's not quite that simple, is it?

He doesn't know why he doesn't just keep his mouth shut, why it's Charlie who manages to coax these concerns out of him, out loud, for the first time. Maybe it's because he remembers the way Charlie was, bellowing and shoving to get past him to be at Meyer's side when he was hurt, or how exhausted he'd looked the next day when he'd fallen asleep on the couch. Or because he'd seen the way the two of them were towards each other when they were all alone, even if it had been in Meyer's dream. Charlie might say he's never seen love up close before, but maybe it's just because it's too close for him to recognize.

"Except what if something happens?" The question is rhetorical, but he looks at Charlie all the same as if he's going to have an answer, "What if he disappears one day, the way people are always disappearing around here, and I never see him again? Or... what if the next time they're doing some psycho experiment something happens to him?"

That whole rock-throwing thing is starting to look like a good option to Ned, so he picks one up, too, launches it out past the small waves so that it skips twice on the surface of the water before sinking. He loves Daneel, loves what he has with Daneel, wouldn't change it for the world. But he knows it makes him weak, knows that caring about someone means setting himself up for pain when that person gets taken away, as they inevitably will.

And these are things, he knows, that could happen to Meyer too. Have happened. He hasn't disappeared, hasn't died, but he got hurt. Badly. Both of them saw it. It hadn't meant nearly as much to Ned as he now knows it had to Charlie, but it hadn't left him unaffected.

Edited 2013-07-15 03:47 (UTC)

It is something Charlie has thought of, although he tries desperately not to. Him and Meyer practically showed up together, right? That means one of them won't leave without the other. But the idea is in his head now, stabbing him right in the fucking gut.

What would be worse? Being left behind here, or knowing he left Meyer on his own, maybe to get hurt again.

He curls his arms around himself, feeling very suddenly far too vulnerable out here in the open. He's not allowed to not have Meyer around, it's just too incomprehensible. It's always been the two of them, ever since they was kids.

"I ain't gonna let that happen to us again."

Ned nods, like Charlie's just said something that means anything. Like either of them can make that choice for themselves. From Charlie's body language, he knows that, too. Neither of them can do anything to prevent getting separated. But at the very least, Ned thinks, he can offer.

"If anything happens... I mean, if you disappear and Meyer's still around, I'll watch his back." Not exactly that impressive of an offer, considering he's just a baker, and the two of them will still be apart from one another. But it's the best he can manage, "And if it's the reverse, well, I'll watch your back, too."

He sighs, briefly; they aren't safe here, but they aren't safe at home, either. If Meyer and Charlie go back, it will be to a world of gangsters and guns and war on the horizon. If Ned goes back, it will be to a place where he'll never really be safe because of what he is, because of the secret that he has to keep. And Meyer and Charlie will be in danger because of the secret they're keeping, too, about one another. But if they stay here, who's to say the next experiment won't leave them wounded or dead.

Man this conversation got gloomy. It's not really a genre of conversation Charlie is all the comfortable or experienced with. He doesn't brood, himself, it's never been anything he sees much use in. Besides, the guys he used to hang out with you got your ass kicked for that sort of thing.

Still, Charlie appreciates the offer for what it is. Protection is a form of currency he's familiar with, and he gives Ned a nod. "Yeah. You, too."

Ned picks up another rock to throw in the water, watches it skip on the surface and then sink down. Rather like this talk of theirs has sunken down into melancholy. Really, he didn't mean for that to happen. Ned tries to spend as little time as possible thinking about being here, about his own helplessness, about what might happen to any of them at any second. But there's only so much he can do to stop it. He'd spent so much of his life spinning out the possibilities, trying to calculate the safest path for himself. He's in a situation now where no amount of calculation will do any good, and it makes him feel as powerless as he had when he was a child.

And even though he remembers how sick he'd gotten last time, even though he'd told himself it probably wasn't a good idea to ever get that way again, he hears himself saying, "You know, I'm pretty sure there's still some half-decent stuff to drink left in the bar." It's an invitation, without explicitly being one. He'd ducked in there the other day seeing if there was food left in the kitchen, and he'd been surprised by how many bottles were still around.

"That sounds like the best fucking idea, yet." He likes you, Ned. You are a thinker. Anyway, they got along much better the last time when alcohol was involved. At least, as far as he remembers.

He give Ned a grin and starts heading back into the town.

"So... can I ask you something?" Ned keeps pace with Charlie, hands in his pockets, searching for some cheerier topic of conversation. He isn't sure he should really broach this, but he's going to regardless. "How long have you and Meyer..." he trails off, making a quick and vague gesture in the air with his hand. He doesn't really know the correct words to finish that sentence, and leaving it ambiguous is, he suspects, an easier way to avoid potentially offending Charlie.

With Meyer, it had seemed not only as if he didn't want Ned speaking about his relationship with Charlie to others, but as if he didn't want to discuss it with Ned to any degree whatsoever. Will the same be true of Charlie?

He's tempted to be a dick and play obtuse, make Ned say what he's obviously asking. He already knows how they met, how long they've known each other for. There really is only one thing he could be asking about, and it's playing a little too dumb even for Charlie to pretend like he doesn't know. He kicks at a pebble in the sand and pretends to think about it.

"Couple'a years? Three, maybe four."

Charlie isn't going red, or looking like he's about to be ill; he's not yelling or threatening. All the same, Ned feels he ought to preface his next question with, "If you don't want to answer me that's fine, just tell me to shut up and I will. I guess I'm just curious... how it happened. And I thought, I mean, since it's a secret, you might not have ever talked about it before, and you might want to."

It might not be exactly the same as the secret that he'd been carrying around with him those twenty years, but Ned knows that, when the first person (River, he thinks) found out, it had been surprisingly nice to just.. talk about his powers, on a very basic level.

As far as Charlie's concerned, now that the cat's outta the bag, there isn't much to be awkward of embarrassed about. He's slightly confused about why Ned wants to know so much, but if talking about it keeps him happy, he's not going to argue it. A picks up another pebble, rolling it between his fingers this time, something to keep his hands busy.

"Dunno, just kinda happened, y'know? We was at Meyer's place, just drinking and talking and shit and he just fucking kissed me." Or maybe he kissed him, the details are a little fuzzy. "I'd never really thought much abouts him like that before. More'n anyone else, anyways. I known the guys since he was a kid, y'know? But it was nice, and I figured I wanted to do it again."

They're approaching the bar now, and Ned really hopes that it's unoccupied. He wants to keep talking to Charlie, without worrying about being overheard.

Charlie doesn't make much of the story, but Ned thinks it is rather sweet. It must have taken a certain amount of courage, as far as he's concerned. That sort of thing was plenty emotionally complicated in his own time, but in theirs it was more than that. It was a real risk. Was illegal, as far as he knows.

That thought leads him to another, and to another, so that he asks, "If the stuff I saw in his dreams was true... was yours? I mean, about being in prison?" There's something obviously tentative in his voice; he doesn't want to overstep his bounds. Ned holds open the door for Charlie, is glad to see that the bar is unoccupied.

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/casually had to look up when Rossom's Universal Robots came out

that is some quality tag research, that is

yep some high quality googling. Alas Metropolis only came out in 1927

yeah gosh ned check your 21st century privilege

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