[open] channeling angels in a new age, now.

[priorly]

Who: Prior Walter (priorly) & you??
What: Catch all logs for October!
When: October!
Where: various
Warning(s): language, likely mention of terminal illness (AIDS). Adult themes?
Notes: Please PM me if you'd like a starter, or feel free to wildcard me anytime.

Comments

[priorly]

Lesser men wouldn't admit to it. [Which is a small but not insignificant note of approval.] I would like to borrow a shirt.

[Not for the cold, for the scatter of wine-stain abominations across his chest. Shedding his own jacket (in a neat fold over the back of a chair) he bends to pick up the shirt that had accosted him earlier - it already looks slept in. He raises eyebrows, questioning.]

And is the bathroom next door? If I can't moisturize, I should at least cleanse.

[vorrutyer]

Please, give me a little bit of credit.

[ By goes to a little table beside his bed and picks up a small jar. Definitely not the best moisturizer one will find - definitely not the prime bioengineered stuff he's used to back home - but it works. He hands it to Prior. ]

Go, it's two doors down. Do not go next door; that will have a woman screaming bloody murder. Or attempting to bloody murder you.

[priorly]

[Really, he just wants somewhere to change without having to hide behind his own arms like a shy schoolgirl in the locker room. But the moisturizer's a perfectly welcome surprise.]

Assumption or experience? You look whole enough, I'll go with the first.

[To the bathroom! He's not gone long, but returns sleeker of skin and with shirt tails hanging loose around his thighs. Byerly's not vastly broader or taller, but he's enough of both to make it an oversized fit.]

[vorrutyer]

[ By himself actually has a set of proper pajamas in a cool, tasteful dark green. He's slipping into the bed - a touch narrow for two people, but so be it - as Prior comes back in. He lifts his arm, a clear invitation to join him. ]

[priorly]

[Prior himself is a touch narrow, this shouldn't be problematic. He sits on the edge of the bed but doesn't lay down right away, closing his eyes for a moment.]

Do you think we'll get used to it, here? That eventually a day will go by, then a week, a month even, where something entirely mundane won't suddenly turn into a vicious and unwelcome reminder of just how far from home we are?

[vorrutyer]

Of course.

[ Byerly wriggles back to make a bit more room for Prior. His voice is pragmatic. ]

The mind always adapts. Its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. In time, this will be entirely familiar and comfortable.

[priorly]

[It's a perfectly reasonable answer, quite correct, and still somehow not what Prior expects. He looks down at Byerly, then nods.]

Of course, you're right.

[He settles down into the crook of that offered arm, bowing his head against Byerly's shoulder.]

Except I almost don't think I want it to.

[vorrutyer]

[ By immediately wraps him in his arms, holding him close, tucking him in against him. It's not what Byerly usually does, of course, this sort of physical intimacy. He's too unsentimental, unromantic for it. But he suspects that it will make Prior happy, and he wants to do what will make Prior happy. He does, after all, live to serve. ]

No? Speaking of exhausting yourself. Maintaining healthy paranoia is too much, but spending every day denying your current existence, that's fine, sure...

[priorly]

[He would, honestly, be as grateful simply to share a space with someone warm and solid and real. But Prior is a physical creature, seeks out touch where he can and - with some adjustment of Byerly's hold (looser, a little less of an embrace) - he's comfortable here.]

Fair enough. When you show me the prescription for a healthy dose of paranoia, I'll stop missing New York traffic. It's like this city's got no blood in its veins.

[vorrutyer]

[ A little snort. ]

What, groundcars are a city's lifeblood? Well, I'll admit, given the habits of Vorbarr Sultana's drivers, they certainly have a habit of spilling the city's lifeblood...

[priorly]

[Wait.]

You have flying cars?

[Byerly do you know you're living the actual 80's dream. Give or take hoverboards. Prior goes to the effort of tipping his head back far enough to upside-down judge from the man's expression whether this is the truth.]

They just make you feel like the world's still out there, moving. It's too quiet for me here. I've come to mistrust silence, stillness - they feel like premonitions.

[vorrutyer]

[ A little shrug. ]

Well, we have lightflyers. They're not exactly flying cars - it's not as though you can just slap antigrav tech on a car and it'll just float up and away with no problem. But heavens, I can't even imagine what the traffic would be like if we couldn't also expand upwards. I shudder to think of what it must have been like during the Time of Isolation - all that congestion, plus horse shit everywhere.

I'm guessing you were born in the city?

[priorly]

Ah - not quite. New England transplant: we had houses in town and country and the way things worked out made me a child of the latter. But the city's where I grew toward the sun.

[He closes his eyes, face still tilted upward.]

I was born sometime after the horseshit age, myself, except for certain streets around the park. Flying cars, though. I'd like to see those. And you? City boy?

[vorrutyer]

Mm. [ He hesitates a moment - which could be an indication that he's actually about to say something honest. Or it could also be an indication that he's performing the hesitation as a way to lure the other person into thinking he's about to be honest. With By, there really is no way to tell. ]

Small-town, actually. My father was the youngest son of his very large generation, so there was no real inheritance aside from one of the draftier Vorrutyer houses out in the country. So there was that, and the country academy where I failed to go to school. Naturally, I fled for civilization as soon as possible. I was sixteen on the cusp of seventeen when I came to the big scary city.

[priorly]

[Oddly enough, Prior has no cause to test him on this one.]

You wear it well. [He juts his chin, puffing up as much as is possible when you're curled into someone's side.] You've a distinct lack of provinciality about you, I never would have guessed. Was school terrible?

[vorrutyer]

Why, thank you, dear Prior. That's a compliment indeed.

[ By smiles just a little, then says: ]

And I can't say. There was a wicked little group of us who'd run away to drink and smoke and do wicked little things out in the woods. I think I was in class perhaps one day out of three.

[priorly]

[Then home was terrible. It does usually seem to be at least one of those.]

I'd say the most interesting people lack formality in their education, but I know some wonderful would-be intellectuals, too. They're so restful - you can drift off while they're on the precis of their argument and wake before the conclusion's halfway done.

[He smiles and shifts up the bed a little, swapping the silken green of Byerly's shoulder for the pillow beside.]

Then was the city everything you wanted?

[vorrutyer]

[ Maybe the physical intimacy gets to him, too, shifts his way of thinking, because - for once - there's a moment of real, painful honesty out of him. Delivered, naturally, in a light and cheerful and breezy tone, but it's real and brutal honesty. Unvarnished. ]

Well, I think I'd hoped to drink myself to death there, which isn't actually as easy a task as you'd assume. Or failing that, really live a life of dishonor and shame. So no, I found it to be quite the disappointment.

[priorly]

[If there's one benefit to the last six months or so of Prior's life, it's that he takes his pills (unlike his berries) unsugared. There's very little left brutal enough to shake him for long - the world is brutal, and so help him if he won't still stare it down.

There's something sharp about the look he gives Byerly. There could be many ways to fill the space after his words: questions, sympathy, disbelief, denial.]

Then good.

[In truth, this is where he might make the smallest movement, barely turn his head, and kiss Byerly. There are enough reasons to want to: an easy distraction or simply a natural way to convey something that can't be put into words forceful enough to have meaning. Except that he might taste pity there, from someone who refuses his end despite all its whispers of being the easy choice - but knows too well exactly how desperate one has to be to wish for death.

Except for that, and a small tangle of other things that catch and keep him in place. He almost matches Byerly's breezy tone, just so.]

If life must be nothing but a series of fuck-ups, let me be grateful it extended to that. I wish you copious disappointments, baby, there.

[vorrutyer]

Mm.

[ He relaxes, very slightly; the easing of tension would be imperceptible if they weren't pressed together, body to body. But it is a relief, being spared pity. No you poor thing, no why would you ever want to - just a warm sort of pragmatism. It's exactly the right way to play it to avoid scaring Byerly off. ]

Those were my young, self-indulgent days. The desire for that sort of drama has passed. Don't worry. [ Loftily: ] The unidirectional flow of time is largely a curse, but I still thank God for it, because I shall never have to be a teenager again.

[priorly]

I don't know, I think I'd rewind a little, if I could. [As much as he tries to keep anything too sorrowful from his voice, there's something not entirely steady to it, for a moment.] But as a friend told me, not long before we were swept into the storm - the world only spins forward. If it spins here at all, of course. We could be a disc balancing on a pole for all I know. Still.

[He lifts his eyes to Byerly's, whatever was there before pulled back.]

Still. If I ever do find myself missing my younger years, all those hormones and constant emotional tumult raging just beneath the surface of my skin, I have some neat little orange pills that induce a frighteningly similar effect.

[vorrutyer]

Heavens. Please tell me they give you something else, as well. I can't possibly imagine wanting to take one of those pills if that's all you got from them.

[ He lifts his hand to stroke a lock of hair out of Prior's eyes. A little meditatively: ]

I'll admit...I do miss the excitement of it, sometimes. Being young. There's a singular pleasure in finding things out for the first time. [ A little wistfully: ] It would be thrilling to be here if the circumstances were different.

[ Earlier that evening, of course, he was feigning indifference to the death of his world - but this is Prior. Prior gets fewer lies. ]

[priorly]

Oh they all do something. Nothing pretty enough to talk about.

[Blinking under Byerly's careful touch, he half-smiles]

Visitors rather than refugees? There is something about a lack of choice in the matter that makes even the most fabulous of adventures galling. And this is far from fabulous. Though you aren't so old yet, cherie.

[He pushes himself up on an elbow, hair sweeping merrily back into his eyes - not low enough to hide a wicked glint]

Are you? I'm sure you can't be older than say.. forty-five?

[vorrutyer]

[ Byerly's lips twitch in genuine annoyance. Careful, Prior. ]

I'm not going to dignify that with a response.

[priorly]

You're a very well preserved fifty. [Don't pout, come now. It's more than plain he's teasing.] Well, you will be, how's that? I for one have always enjoyed the prospect of growing old disgracefully. A stately homo. Don't you think I'd be beautiful in silver?