lifetothefullest | [IC Inbox

[Lance is not, generally, a huge fan of living with other people.

Of course he has, over time, but typically prefers to be alone or with a girlfriend, and occasionally other friends. He'd lived alone most of his time in Hadriel, and had come to particularly enjoy it, but he hadn't been about to turn down Kyna's offer here and that's been working out.

And although he doesn't in theory have any issue with the idea of Ian staying here for a time--he's Kyna's friend and he needs somewhere to live until he can figure something else out--Lance has still been making an effort to avoid him. Nothing against Ian specifically, just that Lance likes his space and besides, he has things to do and so has been able to find convenient excuses to be out.

But he's returned home briefly for some food, which is why he wanders into the kitchen to be greeted by... Quite a scene. A funny scene, but still, and he raises his hands slightly in a show of apology for startling Ian, and indeed he expects him to take off his headphones.

Instead, the serenade prompts Lance to roll his eyes even while he has to resist the urge to return the next line of the song, but then something occurs to him--]

Wait, are you actually listening to that?

[Is he assuming the volume is low enough Ian can hear him? Yes. Is this a wise assumption? Who knows.]

[ The volume is not particularly low, but when Lance's mouth starts moving he reaches up to tug one of the earphones off. ]

What's that?

[ Except he doesn't really need it repeated, he catches the last little bit and can parse it through context. ]

Oh-- yeah, man. Check it out.

[ He digs around in the pocket of his sweatpants and pulls out the most antiquated thing anyone's ever seen. ]

Woke up with it this morning. Holy shit, right?

[That MP3 player somehow looks older than a Discman would've just because there had been such rapid improvement in MP3 players and Lance has never actually seen one like that.

But he's not judging for once, because he's delighted by the sight of something that plays music, and something that plays music he knows. There had been a little music in Hadriel, from one of the teenagers who'd recorded stuff off of his phone and only the communication devices there, but he'd had questionable taste.]

That's awesome. It just appeared out of nowhere? And has actual recognizable music on it?

Yeah- well- no

[ An ever so slight burny smell catches his attention, and he jumps with a shit muttered under his breath. Twists to turn off the stove and pull the pan up before he super-burns his pancake. ]

It was on my chest or something, and it's-- not just, like, any recognizable music. This is the one I had back home! It's my actual... one with my actual songs, it's crazy.

[ He twists back, holding up the pan. ]

Hey, you want pancakes?

[Huh. Lance considers that a moment while Ian deals with the slightly singed pancake--still better than Lance can do, he's hopeless at cooking--and is about to respond to the whole 'items from home appearing out of nowhere thing' when suddenly he's offered food.]

Um, sure, if you have enough.

[He will not turn down pancakes. But okay, back on topic--]

So either your actual item appeared here from your world, or someone knew enough to make an exact copy and then somehow get into the apartment to leave it for you, with the former being more likely.

[They can't just totally assume it's the former, but he's going to guess that's what happened, and so--]

If so, there must still be some sort of open connection between us and our worlds, or something.

[ Yeah man, of course he has enough, he can flip some more any time. Meanwhile, he splits what he's got onto two plates and slides one over to Lance while he talks. ]

I'm gonna have to go with the former. If we showed up here, why couldn't our stuff? There's no way somebody could know every little detail about this thing, I mean-- down to the scuff? Hell, there are songs on here I completely forgot about.

[ Which doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't exist in his mind, just that the synaptic relays to it weren't flaring. There's no way in the world to know for sure. ]

Maybe it's not a connection. Maybe there's just a big warehouse full of blankets and guns and pogs or whatever, and somebody's just dishin' em out at random.

[ Syrup gets plunked down, and he takes a massive Punctuation Bite at the end of his sentence. ]

[He accepts the plate with a quiet but sincere thank you, pretty enamored with the idea of pancakes; he hasn't had them in some time.

Lance considers Ian's words while he pours his own syrup, but is distracted by the topic for the moment rather than starting on his own food.]

I haven't thought about pogs in a long time.

[For good reason, but still. That combined with the music is giving Lance a decent idea of the timeframe Ian is from, although not narrowed down too much; he's at least experienced the 90s, probably as a kid or teen, and he doesn't look that old, although Lance is somewhat terrible at guessing ages.

But that's not the most important thing right now.]

The last place I was, we would come and go, and sometimes things would appear, but we found out why and there was indeed still an open connection. Not between us individually exactly, but there was an Eldritch-abomination, multi-dimensional Door.

[ He's undeniably amused over the pog nostalgia, but he'll let nerding out over irrelevant and dated 90's memorabilia fall by the wayside for now.

For now. Considering Placebo can be heard now faintly playing on his abandoned headphones, who knows how long that will last.

At least through the duration of this conversation.

Because...

??

He pauses mid chew, asks around a cheek full of food: ]

I'm sorry, what?

[ Eldritch abomination. Cool cool cool. ]

[Lance glances up from finally cutting his own pancake, giving Ian a faintly amused look.]

Which part, that I haven't had pogs in like twenty years?

[But okay, for real--]

It was called the Door, and it was pretty much how I described it. It was a way to move between different dimensions, but it had its own sort of sentience and was alive in some sense. It was also broken for a long time, which didn't help how erratically it behaved.

[ Lance earns an equivalently amused look, wry but patient. Hilarious, but seriously though. ]

So... just so that I'm on the same page--

[ Said with a hand out, palm toward the counter top.

He's pretty sure he is, but he wants the honor of saying it all out loud so it sounds maximum amounts of insane. ]

The last time you were transported from home, it was by a semi-sentient broken Eldritch multi-dimensional being called a door, which would occasionally rob your apartment and give you your stuff back.

[ Is that... is that it? ]

[Give him a moment to think about that and remember the times that items from home showed up in Hadriel, but--]

Yeah, pretty much. We hardly ever got anything from home, though; mostly it was people coming and going.

[ Just, like, the most... tentative look of comprehension and understanding.

Like, he gets it, but... does he though? Does anyone? ]

What the fuck, man.

[ It's more a statement than a question. It's not really something Lance can answer, just. The multiverse is fucking weird and enormous, and his handful of times dropping acid didn't prepare him for it. ]

I haven't even gotten into the emotion-sucking aliens and their nemeses, the ultra-logical cyborgs.

[Said with enough humor that it's clear he very much gets how weird this is and how weird it sounds; it's been a few years and he's gotten used to this nonsense, but when he first arrived in Hadriel it had been quite an adjustment.]

[ Sheer, unadulterated amusement barely filtered by casual-calm demeanor. The sad thing is it's fucking possible, it's completely possible. The universe is fucking insane. ]

Kyna almost had me convinced Einstein was a pixie where she's from, so I wouldn't laugh too hard just yet. You never know, you never know.

[Lance laughs a little at that, because--]

I wasn't joking. That was legitimately part of it.

[But that said, he has to ask about that other comment.]

She said Einstein was a pixie? I actually could have believed that too; her world's weird.

[ He... there's a moment wherein it's obvious he's legitimately trying to discern whether or not Lance is kidding about not kidding, because that... fucking... That sentence was absurd. ]

Yeah, sure, her world is--

[ Wow get a little perspective man. ]

What you just said is the most insane shit I've ever heard. Like, I'm on the fence about whether or not you're really just one of those crazy ladies that wander down allies yelling at cats back home.

[Lance gives him the time to think about it, taking another bite of pancake, and is faintly amused by the disbelief. Sure, it's totally warranted, but what a way of putting it.]

I know it sounds totally ridiculous, but there are at least two other people here who were also in Hadriel with me, and who can corroborate. Either we're all cat ladies or none of us are.

I hear they move in herds.

[ He proposes helpfully. Cat ladies, that is.

But on a more serious note; ]

Who else? Not Kyna right? I feel like that would've come up by now.

[Lance is expecting Ian to ask who, but not necessarily to guess and definitely not to guess Kyna. So he can't quite catch himself in time to prevent his eyes from flickering and his smile faltering, but it's only for a brief moment.

Hopefully, it'll just go unnoticed, especially as he answers quickly in an attempt to immediately deflect.]

Have you met Nate? He's one of them. Another is Drake--he's not related to Nate, Drake's his first name--and then there's Cecily too.

[ He puffs out a soft laugh. ]

Yeah, I know him and Drake both.

[ Not so much Cecily, but him and First-Name-Drake are — is it still called eskimo brothers? ]

Jesus. I mean, I believed you — mostly — but it's nuts that you guys have like a club of people.

[Okay, maybe he got away with it; either way he'll just move on.]

Yeah, it's really weird. I think we all came from the same point in time in Hadriel too, so that's also strange.

I feel like if I were, like, forty percent smarter I could stare into the matrix and see what the pattern is.

[ Because there has to be one. Too many people are coming in clusters for it to be entirely sporadic — on top of that, the vast majority of the people here seem to be from within the same hundred year span, if they're from earth.

But as it stands, his peak intellectual level doesn't even allow him to recreate Sunny D. ]

A lot of people tried, in Hadriel. We never did figure it out, although I remember one of the gods saying something about the Door liking chaos? Something like that.

[It was one of those things he's pretty sure he heard second or third hand, but it fit. The Door liked to pull in people who were either prone to causing chaos, or were in a chaotic moment in their lives at the point they arrived from.]

[ He puffs out a dry laugh. ]

Yeah, I guess that tracks. My world was absolute fucking bonkers chaos.

[ If they're operating under the assumption that the motivation here is the same, that is. Who the fuck knows? ]

In what way?

[He has to ask with a comment like that, and presumes that by Ian bringing it up he's okay to talk about it; if not, Lance will just let him dodge the question however he chooses to.]

[IC Inbox | Meadowlark]

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