| Date:
Characters: Lane Williams, Brant Hysmith Location: Link to IJ: thread #7506 |
 What Lane needed was somewhere to grab a nap and get his bearings a little. Put some walls between him and everyone else. He'd overheard enough conversations to know that they'd all been pulled into this place through the same method - simply walking through a door. But here didn't seem to be Earth, and that took a bit for him to wrap his mind around. It was one thing to fall between different dimensions and land on the same basic principles, but quite another to be tossed into a situation with no landmarks.
More versions of people already present seemed to be filtering in, along with others that he couldn't put a name to. Some seemed to know each other, or at least be able to connect themselves to something familiar. It put everyone on a level plane and at least that was one thing in his favor. Finding his way down a long hallway of numbered doors, he chose one at random and let himself in. "Oh, sorry," he murmured and tried his best to keep his stance casual. "Didn't know this one was already occupied." |
 He'd just taken the last step off his transport. He should have had his feet on the ground, and been standing in blazing sunlight.
He wasn't. The last step felt a little longer, and he stumbled out of the light and into darkness. He didn't fall, but only because there was a wall where there shouldn't have been one and his shoulder hit it. His eyes hadn't adjusted and though the darkness wasn't complete, he was definitely blind. He pushed away from the wall and, with a bit of groping around, found what felt like the outline of a door. A little more fumbling and he'd found the door's knob. He turned it, experimentally, and then pulled. When nothing happened he pushed, it was pulled out of his hand. He blinked at the light, and the man standing there. This was definitely not where he was supposed to be. He heard the question, but couldn't quite process an answer, since he didn't know what was going on. "What the hell?" he asked, his expression reflecting as much bewilderment as his voice, with just a slight edge of fear fueled anger. |
| Lane made a visual sweep of the room: they were alone. But the guy looked much like he'd felt when he'd first arrived - confused, disoriented, and pissed the hell off.
So he held up his hands in what he hoped was a placating gesture but turned his body a fraction into a ready-stance just in case the guy blamed him. "Hey, buddy, just a mistake. Let me guess - not end up where you thought you would?" |
| Lane lifting his hands actually did placate him, if only because that meant they were up and empty. More instinct than knowledge, that, but it was still there. "Good guess. Want to tell me how you made it?" And yeah, disoriented, confused and pissed off was about it.
With Lane in the doorway trapped was on the list, too. Brant took a step straight back into the room to give them both a little more room. Well, mostly him, but it worked both ways. |
| "Same as you, mostly. One minute you're off to take a piss and the next you're... not. Still working on the how and where." He took a step back to mirror the other guy's retreat, then lowered his head a bit and smirked. Alright, so they'd get the posturing out of the way, and he wasn't about to crowd him. He might be young, but he was built and... well, Lane tried not to think too far in that direction. |
| The second Lane lowered his head, Brant relaxed, and looked around enough to realize that he was in something that resembled a really out-dated bedroom. It did not make him less confused. "I wasn't off to take a piss," he answered absently, and started trying to find a way the light. |
| "I was, but never mind. Wherever you were going, you're going to be delayed. Light switch is on the wall by the bed." Lane didn't move to show him, keeping his spot until he could tell if the guy could handle him either leaving or staying. |
| "Someone come along and rub your nose in it, or did you manage to stop yourself from leaving a puddle?" he asked, sounding exactly like he felt: too stunned stupid to be particularly good at quipping. He turned around, knelt on the bed and found the light switch. Flipped it and looked up at the light and squinted. "How long've you been here?" He was still working on that going to be delayed thing. |
| Lane snorted. It looked like Jack, sounded like Jack - only younger. Much younger. He tried not to stare and failed miserably.
"Hard to tell how long, really, time's not working right. A day and a night, from what I can tell. And there are others here - don't know much beyond that yet. No one really in charge. I was just looking for somewhere to light for a bit." |
| "Time's not working right?" He asked, and went from looking at the light to staring at Lane, hard. "Not working right how?" He followed up his question with another one. He walked back over toward Lane, shoulders tensed up again, muscles coiled. No one in charge he filed. That was a good sign. "Light?" Not getting that particular reference, either. |
| >Shit. But now wasn't the time for placating - someone needed to control the situation. "Flying things," he said, walking past Brant. "When they come in to land - they light. Well, at least birds, bats, insects. What do you know about time streams interacting with each other?" He pulled the drapes apart with a finger, peeking outside. Maybe turning his back on him wasn't the best idea, but at least he was skirting a confrontation. When he turned around to face him again, he shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. |
| "You're not flying." State the obvious there, Brant. Turning his back on Jack was actually a good idea. It broke tension, displayed confidence and gave Jack a second to get his shit together, a little. "They happen? I don't know! I haven't even made it to the Academy, yet." |
| "Academy." It sounded more like a statement than a question. "That's where you were headed? You might be close... whereabouts is it?" |
| He shook his head, just a little. It wasn't confusion, or denial, but refusal - unspoken but unmistakable 'no.'
"You said you didn't know where here was." |
| "Okay," Lane grinned. The guy wasn't stupid. "How about this, then. When were you headed? What year?" |
| He lifted his eyebrows, and gave Lane a beautiful, sweet smile and said, "How about you go first." |
| Lane's grin grew. "I bet you get your way a lot with that smile. 21st century - that's just one example of how fucked time is here. Now can we move on to names? Or do we have to wrestle to see who goes first?" |
| The grin turned a little (just a little) more honest with the remark about getting his way and his smile. "You were headed for the twenty first century? Doesn't look like you're all that off." Not like he was sure of that, though. "My name's Brant. Yours?" |
| "Lane. And I think you're right about the time frame, at least superficially. Nice to meet you, Brant. Anyone ever tell you that you look like a Jack?" It wasn't that he could be lying as much as simply not being the Jack. He stepped closer, tilting his head. "Not that Brant isn't a nice name." |
| He wasn't lying - he just hadn't taken the name yet. He shook his head and looked generally confused. "I can't say they have. Jack, huh? You look a little like a John."
He did not smirk. It was a near thing. |
| Lane mocked a thinking face. "I've been a lot of things, but never a John."
Flashing a grin, he tried not to look too closely at Brant's mouth while he fought a smirk. "So you're thrown into another dimension, time mark, whatever you call it. Whadd'ya feel like doing? What's your first move?" |
| He felt like he was being given a pop-quiz, and reacted accordingly.
"Blend in." |
| "Very good. But what if blending in isn't going to work? I mean..." he took a moment to study Brant, eyes raking over his form. |
| He blushed - honest to god blushed, color and heat both rising in his cheeks and the back of his neck. "With the time- There are hot people everywhere!" |
| Lane's eyebrows lifted and he nodded. "True. Very true, especially here. But-" he leaned close, voice almost at a whisper. "What would you do if you met another version of yourself?"
He tried to remind himself this wasn't Jack - maybe Jack was someone he became later, during one of those spaces of unreported time. He tried not to wonder if the other Jack smelled like Brant, if he'd ever been this young. This one blushed. |
| He looked a little uncomfortable. He was uncomfortable. Rather than backing up, though, he shifted his weight and planted himself where he was, Lane well inside his personal space, his eyes up and on Lane's and blush and all just refused like hell to flinch or back down. From pretty much anything. Even if he didn't know what he was doing. With anything.
"If I met another version of myself I'd assume one of us knew what the hell was going on," he said, dryly. |
| Snickering, Lane leaned back and out of Brant's personal space. "It can be good to be situationally flexible." He let one side of his mouth curl upward, thinking of a whole list of innuendo involving the word flexible. But Brant was still quietly freaking out, and he'd pushed far enough.
Lane had pushed himself far enough, as well, testing his own depth of obsession that had been quietly growing for Jack. Researching him had been one thing-molesting a younger, much different version was something quite different. Enough poking them both. For now. "So. I can leave, let you take all this onboard. Or I could stay. Your call." There. Hand it over, let Brant have his control. See where he took it. |
| Naive and out of his depth, yes. Completely stupid, no.
"Tell me how you got here and when you're from." He paused and added, "Please." Because it was the polite thing to do. Also, what he was going to do with the control was try to find out enough to be able to make any sort of decision. If he didn't get information, he'd do the more natural (for him) thing - close his eyes and jump. |
| "I stepped out of Cardiff, Wales in 2007 and into this place. Where I'm from doesn't matter, because it doesn't exist anymore for me. I thought it mattered, but I don't want to go back there. Don't know where I belong. Don't know where I want to be. But I'm here, and until I figure out how this all works, I suppose we have to find a way to exist without getting killed or locked up. 'Cause neither appeals to me." He lifted his hands, palms up and shrugged. "I'm beginning to think there's not really a reason any more. Just choices. Right now I don't know if I should fight or submit, but I'm getting tired of hiding from it, whatever it is." |
| There was so much honesty there, and Lane sounded so lost, that of course it go to Brant. At least, a little and enough for his hackles to go all the way down, and nearly all of his caution to go right out the window. "Okay, look," he said after a silent moment of processing, or trying to. "I'm not going to make you fight or submit, and crawling down my pants probably isn't going to help anything, but stay." He inclined his head toward the bed. |
| Lane smiled, and for a moment felt relieved to have said it all out loud. He wasn't sure he'd been that honest to himself, much less someone what was little more than a stranger.
"Thanks," he said and sat on the nearby bed. "Not that I wouldn't love crawling down your pants. I just don't know what the hell I'm doing here and I'm not okay with that." He flopped onto his back and let his arms fall wide against the bedspread. "I have so many questions and the only people that could answer them scare the hell out of me." |
| He pivoted to watch Lane sprawl on the bed, and kicked him gently in the ankle. "I said stay, I didn't say hog the bed." He didn't pause there, though, and went on to the more serious topic. " We'll talk about my pants later. There are people here with answers?" That they scared the hell out of Lane would have told him something, if he'd bothered to pay attention. |
| Lane rolled the right-way on the bed and watched Brant watching him. "I think there are. I hope so. I've had my ears open, and there are a few that have ideas." He wiggled down into the bed, getting comfortable. "I feel like we're just being... watched. Or assessed or something. Maybe we're just some kid's science project. But I was probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I'm usually not one to sit back and let others do the heavy lifting, but a few of them seem to know more about the logistics." |
| He didn't think twice about crawling onto the bed and stretching out on his side, propped up on his elbow and facing Lane. "So, you fell through from 2007 Cardiff, from somewhere that doesn't exist, you don't have any idea what's going on, it's making you nervous and you're waiting to see what...other people can find out." The hesitation was because right now anyone else was purely hypothetical. |
| Lane stared at the ceiling, hands folded on his stomach. "Pretty much, yeah. Some of them... they talk about time like it's something mobile. Like this sort of thing happens all the time. Maybe it does, I don't know. I never really thought about time being a different concept than space. But they talk like you can travel through it just like you can travel through space. Which I assume can be done as well. I don't know how any of it works, that sort of thing was irrelevant where I grew up. So - yeah." He turned his head to look at Brant. "Would it freak you out to meet yourself? Or someone you won't meet for a long time? What time are you from, anyway. For all I know you're from the future and this sort of thing happens all the time." |
| He propped his cheek in his hand and watched Lane. It took him a minute to answer, because he was realizing that appearances and ages to the contrary, he wasn't anywhere near as over his head as Lane was, and that scared him, a little.
"Time is a little like space in that you can move through it, but it's... " He didn't really have all the vocabulary, or knowledge he needed. "Fragile. It's easy to break or unravel." Which was why he wanted to be a time agent. He kept his eyes on Lane's as he considered the questions Lane had actually posed. "It'd scare me because it's dangerous, mostly. I'm from," he stopped and counted. "About three thousand years further along than you are, when you ended up here. And this sort of thing doesn't happen all the time. At least I don't think it does." |
| There was a sharp intake of breath and Lane's eyes widened. "Three thousand years? But you look..." his eyes traveled over Brant's face, "okay, you don't have tentacles or anything, do you? No. I don't want to know. Fuck - yes I do." |
| He drew back a little, expression caught between amusement and mild offense. "All right, in the first place there's nothing wrong with tentacles. In the second - where do you think I'd be hiding them?" He was teasing, warm and gentle and yeah, there was innuendo there. "My pants?" |
| "Well, since I haven't been in them yet..." his eyebrows lifted, "I wouldn't know. Wait... you know people with tentacles? Are there space ships? Do you have a space ship? Or is it in your pants with your tentacles? Shit. How do you know about time? Does everyone travel in time?" |
| He held his hand up, looking completely bewildered. "Wait a minute. I thought. You said where you came from doesn't exist anymore. How did you end up in Cardiff, then? And not know about time and space?" |
| "Same way I ended up here. Just... boom. Well, it may have had something to do with my detonating an experimental nuclear device at the time. Our education system wasn't so big on the sciences. I've learned what I could since falling through, but it's all theoretical." He waved a hand.
"I ended up in Cardiff because I had a job there. Mostly. Plus there were people there I was watching, trying to figure this stuff out. I thought they knew how it worked. But I've never seen it in action." |
| "Wait, fell through what? You don't mean fell through to here, right? Since you fell through to Cardiff first, and what kind of job and denating what?" He was getting more bewildered by the second. Also more worried about Lane. Not because it didn't make sense to him, but because it almost did. |
| Lane laughed to himself. Alright, so it did sound a bit... odd. "I was on my home world. I set off an explosion that might have gone a bit awry - to get rid of these.. hell, I don't know what they were, but they weren't nice. There was a light, which I assumed was the explosion and when it went away I was on Earth. Cardiff 2007 Earth. I've been there little over a year. I was in Cardiff doing a security consultation and woke up in my hotel room, went to take a piss and ended up here." He waved a hand around. "My third dimension without any cool spaceship, dammit." |
| "Do you know if you fell through time the first time, or just space?" he asked, carefully. "Are you human?" |
| "Uh..." he looked uncertain. "Blood says I'm human. Or, it didn't say I'm not. I have human parts. How would I know anyway? Is there a checklist? Wait - that means you know non humans. There really is a checklist." |
| "I don't know. I am from like the tiniest little town you've ever seen, on a planet that's the universe's appendix or something. I don't know what kind of checklists there are. I'm barely sure I don't have tentacles at this point." |
| "Hm. Well maybe they just haven't sprouted yet," Lane grinned. "What makes a person human, anyway. Shape? Birthplace? Mortality? Having a soul?" He turned on his side to face Brant. "Have you seen things that weren't human? Is that why you're asking?" |
| "Is that what they call it where you're from?" He asked, without it really being a question. He shook his head, and his grin faded a little, but didn't disappear entirely. "I don't know. I know there are aliens that look superfically human and aren't, where your born and mortality and having a soul can't be it. Maybe it's just a genetic quirk?" He really didn't know. "And sure. I mean not a lot, remember that 'living in the universe's appendix' thing, but. It's a huge universe, you know. Life's everywhere." And he could not wait to get out there. |
| Lane smirked. "You make it sound romantic." |
| He flushed, just a little. "So?" he asked, a little growly and defensive. |
| "No," Lane said, and reached out to touch his shoulder. "You make it sound exciting. Like it's an adventure. I grew up in a city with walls around it-I never had any idea how big the universe was. I don't think I ever even thought about it." |
| He -very obviously- responded to being touched. The hackles went down, the growl faded out of his voice, and tension just bled out of him. His grin came back and there was no artifice behind it, it was just warm and bright.
"No walls for me, and I think I know everyone who lived in my town it was so tiny, but there was no missing just how big it is out there - all those stars." Yeah, there was a romantic in there. |
| Lane reached up to touch his cheek, but hesitated. He wanted to ground himself somehow in Brant's wonder, in the brightness in his words and smile. Anything other than being terrified of everything an out there implied. Time and space and things that couldn't be killed. "Do they count time on your planet?" |
| He noticed the hesitation, subconsciously, lifted his hand and wove his fingers through Lane's, so their palms were pressed together.
He was relaxed, he trusted Lane (within reason) and, for the moment, not being where he was supposed to be wasn't a huge deal. He was somewhere. Reaching out and touching wasn't second nature, it was just him. "Sure," he answered, easy and curious. "Don't they where you're from?" |
| "Not where I was born." He fought his initial instinct to pull away from Brant's touch. It wasn't that it was bad, just that he wasn't accustomed to it. Instead, he focused on how warm his skin was, at the strength in the fingers woven through his. "Trying to remember if I was so full of hope at your age. Which, no. I didn't know what hope was. I don't think I knew what anything was. What - you can't even be twenty yet." His heart was racing and he swallowed hard, fighting with whatever was rising in him, something that tasted like fear and felt like ice. He knew he could turn it all off, but he didn't want to - he wanted to feel it. |
| Brant was a good kid, and he was far from stupid. He knew that something was scaring Lane. He could read that response just fine - from the fight to not pull away from his hand, to the hard swallow. None of that meant he understood it. "Yeah, 18," he answered, absently because that was clearly not the point. "What's wrong?" He didn't ask lightly or dismissively. He just wanted to understand, so he could help. |
| "What about the bad. Out there. Aren't you afraid of what you'll find?" |
| He didn't let go of Lane's hand, or repeat his question. He did answer Lane's. "Some," he admitted. "I'm not stupid; I know there's stuff out there worth being afraid of. I guess I just want the awesome enough to be willing to fight through the crap." |
| "Everything I've done and everything I've seen and I really don't know anything, do I? But you have it all ahead of you. You haven't even started." He took a shaky breath and closed his eyes, shoving the fear down deep. When he opened them, he shook his head. "It's probably just... proximity. I'm not used to this. Fight or flight kicking in. There's usually a layer of something between me an anyone else." |
| "I really haven't. Maybe I'm just too naive to know better," he admitted. It was an admission, or at least a confidence, because he was going to do it, anyway. He frowned a little, crease appearing right between his eyebrows and gestured to their hands. "That kind of proximity, or the other kind?" |
| "Both? You're so open. It goes against everything I know: no touching, no talking, no sharing - you frighten me. I've lived my life outside of everything, keeping it all contained. And you're just... out there. I may not know anything about the universe, but I know how dark it is. I know the horrible things people do to each other. And then here's you, holding my hand. I... don't think I've ever had anyone do that before. I don't understand it." He looked at their joined hands, curious. "Why are you? Is this some custom where you're from?" |
| "Holding hands?" Brant asked. He wasn't being difficult, he certainly wasn't mocking, but he was confused. "Calling it a custom might be overstating it. Probably by a lot. You looked scared and upset, I was trying to help." He shrugged a little, and looked a little uncomfortable, though he was still smiling. "Should I let go?" |
| "No no, it's nice. Calming. I didn't know it would do that. Compassion? Is that what it is? Something like concern. Alright, you're reduced me to babbling - you make me want to shut your doors. I don't do this. What are you that makes me want to open mine?" |
| "I'm glad it's helping." He smiled, rubbed his thumb over the side of Lane's hand, and said, "I don't know what I am besides a guy, but you're worn out and using metaphors I don't quite get. I make you want to shut my doors?" He thought he almost got the one about Lane opening his. Maybe. |
| "You just radiate emotion. It's instinct for me to want to shut you down - where I'm from, it was something we executed for. Don't know if it's reading expression or body language, or something else entirely, but you're just out there. It's not a bad thing, but it could get you hurt. I wouldn't want that. It's beautiful." Lane sighed, blinking tiredly. "I must be worn out, 'cause I'm really not censoring much anymore, am I?" |
| He was radiating emotion, and it didn't get better when he heard and processed what Lane was saying. "Shut down and executed?" He was torn firmly between being horrified, offended by the very idea, intensely protective of... Lane, apparently, and anger that was directed at the idea, but not Lane. "What the hell? Why? How could that possibly be bad? And screw censoring. Talk to me - and, uh, sleep," he added, a little sheepishly. "Maybe not at the same time." |
| "Think about it - if there were no emotion, there's be no anger, no hate, no fighting. No war. But people can hide what they're feeling. Intuition tells you when they are. I can tell your levels just went up, I'd be able to tell even if you were trying to hide it. But that's all gone now. Libria died long before I left it." He smiled sadly. "I'm just a remnant. Maybe the only bit left." |
| "No compassion," he pointed out. "no love, no connection. No motivation to give a shit about anyone." He was having a hard time with the concept. "I'd like to say I'm sorry for the loss, but I don't think I am." Sorry for Lane, maybe. And because he wasn't stupid, he did eventually get another concept. One that wasn't foreign in theory but he was exposed to little enough not to jump there easily. "You're tele-" That wasn't right. "Empathic?" he tried again. |
| "Empathic. I don't think so. It was part of our training. True empaths have something extra, something ingrained. It didn't hurt that we appeared to have some sort of secret power on top of everything else.
And it wasn't always fool proof - sometimes people slipped through. But no, compassion wasn't a term that had any relevance. We served Libria because it was our job. I'm not saying it was right, it was just how it was. Anyone charged with a sense offense was executed, even those of us who went off the dose." |
| Flexibility was good, and he had a lot of it. He was able to make some leaps and get to some sense and not fall into culture shock he couldn't get out of, but there was something about this that just bothered the shit out of him. "Sense offense, I'm guessing is back to it being an executable offense to." He made a hand gesture, and took Lane's hand along for the ride. "feel, or show feeling or both. Us, I'm assuming is whoever you were trained with, but dose?" |
| "I thought I would just take this all to my grave with me. I haven't told anyone about any of this. Not even those I knew back on Earth." He took a deep breath, feeling like he was stepping off a high ledge into nothing.
"Twice a day everyone took a drug that disallowed emotion. It was law. Not only could you not feel anything, you weren't supposed to. There were those that refused the drug, and they were killed. So everything was... gray. No color, no deviation, no anything. History was irrelevant other than to show us what went wrong. Things like stars and the universe just didn't matter and nobody cared. They couldn't. Someone like you, I don't want to think about what your life would have been like there. Cold and gray, like everyone else." |
| He responded to Lane taking that deep breath by tightening his fingers around Lane's in silent support, without having to think about what he was diong. "It sounds horrible," he admitted. "Really, really, really horrible. It also seems like you're. Do you know how long you've been gone?" |
| "I know how long I was on Earth before I came here: thirteen months. Libria fell four years before I left... it just disintegrated into anarchy after the fall." |
| "For someone who lost a whole way of life - however miserable and weird it sounds to me- you seem to be doing pretty good." He smiled, almost gently. He squeezed Lane's hand once more and then tugged his hand free, but only to push Lane's hair back from his forehead. It was an oddly protective gesture, given that he was a decade younger than Lane, but Brant sure as hell meant it. "You really do need sleep." |
| Lane smiled. "You learn to go with it. Like you said - fight through the crap to get the amazing stuff. I want to tell you something, and then I'll sleep. But... you may not see me the same. And we've been honest with each other. I feel I have to." |
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