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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"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.

"Yeah. Did six months when I was sixteen." It's not something he likes going on about, but it's also doesn't put someone that out of the ordinary where he's from. Half the guys he knows did at least some time.

Ned nods, not all that surprised. It might have shocked him, if he hadn't had an inkling about Meyer and Charlies' backgrounds and profession before that dream, but it fits with the pattern. All the same he thinks of the bruises on Charlie's face and wonders if that detail, too, was accurate. Probably. It makes his stomach twist a little in sympathy.

"They only kept me in for four days. That was how long it took for them to do the autopsy and realize he'd shot himself and I'd just... found the body."

Which is his way of saying that his half of the dream had been real, too. Four days is nothing compared to six months, of course, but it had seemed plenty long to Ned, at that age, terrified that they were never going to let him out again.

"Shit. You was that young, too?" As soon as they're inside Charlie goes right to rummaging behind the bar. The first things he finds is cherry brandy, which he looks at with some trepidation but hey, booze is booze. Besides, there must be more back here.

Ned has no objection to cherry brandy. When Charlie sets it on the bar he pulls it towards himself, perching on a stool and tucking his long legs beneath it. "It wasn't that bad." By which he means yes, he was that young, "I was just frightened they were never going to let me out. You know what it's like when you're a kid. No one bothers to explain what's going on."

Ned pours himself a shot of the brandy (that was the handiest glass, and he doesn't think Charlie's going to judge him for using the wrong cup) and one for Charlie, too. "There was another boy, Eugene. He was-" Ned hesitates, just for a moment, "- a friend of mine. We were together when we found the guy, but they let him out after a couple of hours. His parents kicked up a fuss."

Down the hatch with the brandy.

"Salute." He raises his own glass to Ned before downing it. God, that tastes like Sunday at his grandmother's house back in Sicily. Better drink more quickly before the taste really catches up with him.

"Here's to fucking connections, huh? Hope that kid fucking grew up appreciating that shit." He remembers enough about what Ned told him about his own childhood, growing up in the boys' school. Seems like getting left in a jail cell as a fucking kid lines up with that.

He clinks glasses with him and downs his second shot, making a face right afterwards. "Jesus that stuff if fucking shit."

Edited 2013-07-18 02:49 (UTC)

The grimace that Charlie makes when he drinks the brandy almost makes it worth it, tasting it himself. Almost.

It doesn't surprise him that Charlie would think of that anecdote in terms of connections - the social and legal usefulness of having parents to come and cause trouble until their son was released from his unjust imprisonment. That was the moment in Ned's life when he, too, had realized that there was more than an emotional impact to his abandonment. That his father forgetting about him would mean that he'd have to fend for himself, legally, economically, and in all the other ways that he barely understood at that age.

"I hope he did, too. I don't really know where he ended up. He stopped talking to me a little while after that." There is still a sweet burn in his mouth and throat from the brandy, rather like cough syrup. Ned smacks his lips together and gives a little shake of his head. Better than nothing, though. He goes on with his story, because Charlie doesn't seem to mind, and because that's what friends do, right? They have conversations about stupid things like brief childhood friendships that ended catastrophically, "I was a bit of an idiot when I was a kid. Jumped in a pile of dead leaves, he saw them come back to life. Pretty sure he thought I was some kind of circus freak after that, but he didn't tell anyone, which was lucky for me."

Ned drinks his second shot, too, and winces at the taste. "It's certainly... potent."

"You weren't the smartest when you was a kid were yous." Really, jumping in a pile of dead leaves in front of another kid just sounds dumb.

He keeps routing around behind the bar, but everything that's left was really left for a reason. There's not much else but weird flavoured vodkas and drink mixers. Creme de Menthe? Really? People still drink that shit?

"This place just keeps getting better and fucking better. First we got no fucking smokes and now the booze is running outs. Even back home it ain't this bleak." He holds up a bottle of what appears to be bubblegum flavoured vodka and shudders.

"It was the first autumn after the whole thing started," Ned answers, a touch defensively, "I'd been jumping in leaf piles for nine years without it being a problem. I didn't think." But the excuses sound weak even to his own ears. Ned deserves that scorn of Charlie's, and he knows it. He's certainly reproached himself in similar (and much harsher) terms ever since. Mistakes aren't a thing that he's allowed to make. Not when the consequences can be (and have been) so much worse than one lost friend.

"You're right, though. I did say I was a bit of an idiot," he says. Thinks privately that he still is. After all, he's making the decision to keep drinking, sliding his shot-glass over towards Charlie to try some of the bubblegum vodka, because why not? It's hard to imagine it being worse than the cherry shit.

As for the booze situation, Ned merely shrugs. He's less worried about that than he is about the food supply, "Maybe we'll have to start making our own. You know how to do that?"

"Yeah, who the hell ain't when they're nine years old, right? I was a real little fucking prick that age." Although not that that's changed TOO much.

He pours them both a shot of the hideous vodka and slides it down the bar to Ned. He's waiting for you to try this one first, pal.

"Naw. AR, the guy I worked for, he weren't interested in the home brewed moonlight shit. He were in the importing business. More of the stills was happening in Jersey."

Ned had seen a younger version of Charlie in Meyer's dream, but not quite that young. He wonders if Charlie was always as... Charlie as he is now, what portion of his current personality was formed by his experiences and what by his nature. Six months of being locked up, at such a young age. Ned remembers how time felt so much slower when he was young, how those four days of his own imprisonment had seemed half a year.

The flavored vodka, when he downs it, is even worse than the brandy had been. If he were a better actor he would pretend it wasn't that bad, just to see the surprise and disgust on Charlie's face, but he's not capable of that. Instead he immediately wrinkles his nose, starts looking for something to wash it down with. There's a sink behind the bar; Ned fills himself a glass of water and drinks it in two big gulps.

Meyer had never really said all that much about what sorts of things he and Charlie did back home, professionally. Apparently they are in the liquor business: unsurprising, considering the time period. "So he imports it, and you two... help with distribution?"

"Something like that, yeahs." More like a little of everything, but Ned doesn't really need to know how he started with mostly blackmail and contract killing on AR's behalf. He's moved up since then, at least somewhat.

That vodka really is hideous, and this is from someone who has partaken in his fair share of bathtub gin. Charlie screws his face up right away. "Jesus fucking christ, people pay money for this shit?"

Ned is probably happier not knowing about the contract killing, and particularly not about the blackmail. Not when he knows how terrible it can be, when you have secrets to keep and other people in possession of them. Just distribution must come with its share of peril and violence, he recognizes, but that's not so much Meyer or Charlie's fault. It's Prohibition. It's the times. It's a way to make their living, in a country that was not then particularly kind to poor kids born in other countries just trying to make their way in the world.

"Probably better if you mix it with something," Ned theorizes, getting up and rifling around behind the bar, looking at his options. He's never worked as a bartender, but he's not exactly averse to trying his hand with a bit of experimentation. There's a single can of lemon-lime soda behind the counter, and a half-empty bottle of grenadine. He sets out two bigger glasses, splits the soda between the two, adds a splash of the grenadine and an amount of the cotton candy vodka. He swirls his around, sips, adds a bit more vodka, sips again.

"Better this way," he says, tipping a bit more vodka into Charlie's, mixing it, and sliding it over to him.

"So what're speakeasys like? Is it all secret back rooms and passwords and flappers, like in the movies?"

"They ain't so different from a bar before they got rid of the booze. Depending where yous are, some places don't even bother hiding its. 'sides, the bosses been running card games for fucking years, now they just added booze to its, too." He remembers being twelve and his father sending him to run drinks at Joe Masseria's game. 'As a favour' he said. Cheap fucker was probably using him as free labour to pay off a gambling debt.

"Back rooms of stores it were, mostly. And more full a people you really don't wants to fucking piss off."

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

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haha I guess Ned has read The Great Gatsby

YEP

good on ya, Ned

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