LOG: i'll stop the world and melt with you [open]

[cacophonish]

Who: Jeff & OPEN
When: Any time in August
Where: Bonnie's, Dogtown, and various businesses around town
Summary: In which Jeff adjusts to life in Gloucester (and encounters problems with his drivers license).
Warnings: Drinking (prompt I), drugs/hallucinogens (prompt III), magical mind fucking/Spiral-related antics (prompt III)

I. TIME TRAVEL BLUES (various locations)

"So, you're..." Pause for mental math. "Forty... seven years old?" Totally deadpan. The liquor store clerk clearly isn't buying the validity of his driver's license.

Jeff flashes a grin, shrugs a shoulder, casual, like he gets that question all the time. "I look good for forty-seven, right? It's all about clean living." ​

Unimpressed, the woman clicks her tongue and pushes the ID back at Jeff. "Cute. Go home, kid."

Later, he tries his luck at a few bars, but it's pretty much the same thing. One look at his ID, and he's out on his ass. One bartender's at least nice enough to give him a soda for his troubles, with a side of advice: "Try harder next time. You can't just use your dad's ancient license from the 90s."

This is so fucking stupid. After years of getting into bars without anyone giving a shit about his age, now Jeff's getting turned away. And the dumbest part is: he's actually 21! He's totally legal! He's been legally allowed to drink for, like, two months!

But, apparently, when you look as young as he does, and your license lists your date of birth as June 6, 1974, and you're trapped in the year 2021, suddenly everyone thinks you're a dumb kid who got majorly ripped off on your fake ID.

Fellow off-worlders may find Jeff trying his luck at a few bars around Gloucester, either getting turned away at the door, or when he tries to order a drink, or-- once he's decided to try a more strategic approach-- flirting his way into getting others to buy him drinks. Maybe you're watching this happen, or maybe you're one of those, uh, "lucky" others.

II. THERE IS SUCH THING AS FREE LUNCH (various locations)

Oh, is your character enjoying a nice meal at a diner? Checking out a local restaurant (or a ubiquitous Denny's)? Hitting up a coffee shop? Suddenly, they've got a new best friend. Jeff flops down at their table like the two of them were always planning on meeting up here. He smiles, like a languid beam of summer sunshine.

"Oh, hey. I've seen you around. How's it going?" His affiliation with the ADI is loose, at best, but he's stopped by HQ a few times, enough that he can recognize some of his fellow off-worlders. Or maybe he knows them from Bonnie's. Whatever the case, he's just invited himself to hang out-- and maybe he'll order something for himself, while he's at it. Does he actually have the money to pay for his share of the food? Good question. The answer is: probably not.

Look, he doesn't get one of those fancy ADI stipends. But he's always been able to rely on the kindness of (relative) strangers before, so why should now be any different?

"Hey, um... can you spot me? I'll totally owe you one."

III. SCRATCHING THE ITCH (Dogtown & Bonnie's)
[ This one's long and mostly takes place in Jeff's headspace to lay the groundwork for why he's doing what he's doing, so here's the tldr summary for anyone who wants to jump in without reading my totally self indulgent narrative:

Jeff goes on a ghost hunting hike to Dogtown with some college grads, they all take a bunch of shrooms, and eventually he uses whatever magic he can grasp to fuck with their emotions and mess with their heads, feeding the Spiral their fear and powering his magic back up for the time being. He steals a bottle of booze from them in the aftermath and wanders back to town, and your character can encounter him along the way, on the trail, in town, or drinking in the common area at Bonnie's! ]

There's three of them, college grads on a haunted road trip across America. Jeff runs into them at a coffee shop, bright eyed and buzzing with excitement about the day's plans. They think he's another tourist, another amateur ghost hunter, because he's too sun-kissed and his accent's from the wrong coast to be from anywhere close to New England. And they're nice enough, and Jeff gets along with them easily, just happy to find some people his own age. Soon, they're chatting and laughing and fitting together like Jeff's always been part of the group, even though he's a high school dropout and they're all setting out for their next round of higher education. Of course they wind up inviting him on the day's outing: a hike around Dogtown, and the promise of magic mushrooms.

Of course Jeff says yes to drugs.

Nothing really happens on the hike, no spooky ghost sightings or anything like that. They laugh about the weird, motivational stones, take pictures with their phones-- they're even nice enough to put something called Spotify on his phone, even though it baffles and amuses them that a musician doesn't know about Spotify (or Soundcloud or anything else). They tell him everything he mentions-- every artist, every band, every movie-- is classic. Retro. Vintage. Obscure. It makes him seem more cool and detached from the mainstream, because it comes across as, like, authentic, like he really loves this stuff, lives and breathes it, instead of using it for hipster cred. For his part, Jeff has no idea what the fuck they're talking about half the time, though he rolls with it with nods and laughs and vague remarks. Fake it til you make it.

They make their way to a nice little secluded spot in front of a long-abandoned building, perfect for drugs and a picnic, settle in, and take the shrooms in responsible, respectable doses. Nothing too crazy, just enough to really vibe with the energy here. Jeff lays back on the blanket, looking up at the face of a future doctor as he waits for the shrooms to kick in, and he's beginning to realize they all think he's quaint, a weird and adorable fucking novelty who's never even heard of Instagram, whatever that is.

"I didn't grow up with computers," he says, which isn't a lie, really. Eventually, there was a computer in his house, for his dad, for work stuff. Jeff never gave enough of a shit to use it. "Or the web," he adds, and they make a weird face and then giggle because nobody calls it the web anymore.

"What, were your parents luddites or something?" a future lawyer asks him, and Jeff shakes his head and tells them with total sincerity that, "No, they're not religious." They laugh like he just told a joke, and for the first time, it feels like they're laughing at him, not with him.

Jeff joins them, bursting out in a vibrant laugh of his own. He wants to cry. He can't even pretend it's just the shrooms making him emotional. The truth is, he wants to cry most of the time, usually when he gets all tangled up in his thoughts. He reaches for a drink to coax himself out of his hole, and things get easy again. They pass the time talking about nothing, conversation drifting further away from whatever the topic was as a wonderful trip begins to bloom inside of them. At some point, he looks up at the future doctor again, and he realizes she's glowing with the sunset. She's so radiant, and pure, and she's looking down at him like he's another radiant and pure thing (which he isn't), and they retreat into their own space together, in the abandoned house. The walls breathe around them, shallowly wheezing with age, and Jeff dances with her-- she leads, he follows. It feels like magic, and in the moment, he thinks that maybe this can scratch the itch for magic magic.

It doesn't. There's still a hole where the Gift used to be, and as they lay together in the bones of a once-loved home, he feels it more achingly than ever. Eventually, they join the others again, and chill out around the illumination of a flashlight, babbling about the energy of the land, the ghosts of Dogtown, and just, like, the viiiiibes of this place. Jeff doesn't say much, he just fixates on that hole inside of him, retreating into his head, wishing he could climb right into that hole and get lost. Maybe he'd find himself back home. Maybe he'd end up in that Other place, the "aether," his grandparents' generation would call it. That space in reality where the magic lives and breathes in its purest form.

That's where Ziggy came from, before it fell down to earth and landed in his head. If he climbed inside that hole, would he land in Ziggy's head?

He wants to cry. Even now, he still wants to cry. Jeff giggles suddenly, and it sounds sharp and discordant to his ears. Nobody seems to notice, since they're all giggling, anyway, from whatever it is they're experiencing right now.

Make them feel what you feel, something says from inside that hole where the Gift used to be. For a second he thinks it might be Ziggy's voice, inasmuch as Ziggy had a voice at all, but he realizes it's just his own voice. He doesn't know if it's spite or loneliness fueling the impulse. He doesn't even know how long it lingers and rattles around in his head, because it's not like time's flowing normally anymore. All he knows is he continues to sink into his own trip, and he's laying on his side, eyes on the flashlight that's standing in for a campfire. Eventually, the future professor asks him to sing one of his songs. He's a musician, right? He's in a band? The future lawyer and future doctor chime in. They all want to hear a Nervous Tix hit.

Make them feel what you feel...

Jeff sits up, blinking like he's just woken up from a dream. He thinks for a moment, then hums softly, wandering through melodies until he lands on the right song. 'Lick The Pole.' It's a silly one, juvenile and irreverent, full of innuendo that's so thinly veiled it barely even qualifies as innuendo at all. Jeff always sings it with a smile, and tonight's not any different. And they don't know the song, so it's not like they can pick up on the tiniest changes in inflection, the way the pitch goes a little this way or that, just slightly, almost imperceptibly, weaving magic into the melody. The Gift isn't here; he can't feel it, hasn't felt it since his arrival, but he still sings as if he's harmonizing with it, and he could swear he feels something coiling around in the hole where the Gift used to be.

The chorus is easy enough to pick up on, and they're singing along soon enough.

Make them feel what you feel.

There's nothing bad about that. It's just... melting his emotions into theirs, bringing all of them together as one unified being of pure empathy. The ultimate bonding. It's not cruel to spread his feelings to them. People always loved it at Tix shows, the manic crush of pure revelry that would bring the show to the next level. Back home, people would say there was something else about a Nervous Tix show, that it was a fucking religious experience.

And here, in this intimate setting, it should be no different. But they don't know what he's doing. They don't understand why they begin to cry, partway through the song, but they know there's something wrong about it. It feels like an infection. They want to laugh and sing along-- or, at least, they know that's what they wanted to do before the wave of loneliness and alienation and grief crashed over their heads and drowned them, and now they can't stop wailing, and they feel like they're going fucking insane. They know what they're feeling is incorrect and unnatural, but they can't stop it, and it's like a nightmare they can't pull themselves out of. Jeff keeps on singing the song until completion, like Nemo or whoever the fuck it was, that Roman asshole with the fiddle.

When he's finished, he feels complete. There's still a hole where the Gift used to be, but now it's occupied. There's something there, and while it doesn't feel like the Gift, it's still magic of a kind, and it'll do. His companions are all curled up on the ground, choking on their own sobs, and he tries not to look at them. He just reaches into the future lawyer's backpack and takes a mostly-full bottle of tequila.

He wanders back in the direction of Gloucester, seemingly aimless as he drifts towards his destination, bottle in hand. It's early in the morning by the time he makes it back to Bonnie's, singing softly to himself.

"Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Weird and Gilly, and The Spiders from Mars..."

Others can encounter him on the way, on the trail from Dogtown or in the sketchy parts of Gloucester-- or maybe they're likely to find him curled up and cozy on a comfy chair in Bonnie's flophouse, drinking his ill-gotten tequila as he tries not to think about what he did to those tourists. They could have been his friends.

IV. WILDCARD
[ Throw whatever your heart desires my way! If you want to plot something, hit me up at weeyotch or weeyotch#8200 on discord and we can hash something out. ]

Comments

[cacophonish]

Jeff's startled by her startling, and there's a brief flinch when she jerks back to life.

"Oh, uhhh... No?" Jeff gestures to her meal. "I just thought I'd save you from wearing a lettuce face mask." A beat, before he leans across the table to really peer into Meredith's salad. What are boundaries? "Unless there's cucumbers in there... That's supposed to be good for the skin, right?"

With all that said, he fixes her with a look of genuine, wide-eyed and absolutely sincere confusion as he asks, "Do you work here?"

The customer service voice totally didn't escape him, though it does have him meandering over to the wrong conclusion.

[henchgal]

"No. No, I don't work here, I was just...uh. Sorry. Sorry." She blinks herself awake slowly before focusing on Jeff uncertainly. "Hi. Sorry about that. I'll stay awake."

She's slowly turning a vivid shade of red, clearly embarrassed to be caught out in public so dead on her feet.

[cacophonish]

Man, this chick's wound tight. He almost feels bad for interrupting her nap, because it looks like she could use one. Jeff offers a smile, hoping to defuse the situation before the poor lady dies of embarrassment.

"Hey, no, no apologies. It's cool." He slouches back in his seat and shrugs a shoulder. "I've been there." He looks up and around at their surroundings. "Though I've neeeever passed out in a place as family friendly as this..."

Jeff tilts his head as he looks at Meredith again, lifting his brow. "You okay?"

[henchgal]

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, I'm just...I've been through some stuff." Under her breath she murmurs something that sounds awfully like 'fucking kelpies' before looking at Jeff. "You don't need to worry about me, really. I...could maybe call one of my roommates to walk me home."

Which would be absolutely fucking embarrassing.

[cacophonish]

I'm fine. Yeah, that's familiar all right. It's the same lie he gives whenever someone asks him how he's doing.

There's a little sympathetic wince when Jeff hears the word kelpies. Fuck those guys. He still doesn't really know what happened with them, exactly. Just that... one tried to drown him, and then he was rescued by a seal. The rest of the night's kind of a blur, but he got the gist of it from others, later.

Total fairy tale fuckery.

"Why? I'm already here. Take a nap, eat your salad, do what you gotta do and I'll walk you home."

He picks up his slice, holds it over the plate juuust so, so he can watch the grease slowly drip off.

"I know we don't really know each other or anything, but. Uh. I usually don't sleep too good either. Especially when I'm Fine."

[henchgal]

She seems genuinely surprised and touched by the offer, picking up her fork to stab at her salad. "Right, I'll finish eating and you can walk me back to the ADI complex. That...that sounds like a plan."

Hopefully she can slip back into her apartment without Tim and Malcolm raising a fuss.

[cacophonish]

"Foolproof," he adds, as if the plan's something totally complex and water tight. Operation: Save Meredith From Embarrassment?

"So... what do you do?" It's a pretty broad question. Does he mean in general? For the ADI? Back home? All of the above? He's not exactly going to clarify as he takes a bite from his pizza.

[henchgal]

He's going to get an answer to both together, then; it works out, since they're intertwined. "Back home, I'm the personal assistant to a tech CEO. Here, I've slotted into the admin department, mostly, but it's pretty much the same sort of work. Paperwork, scheduling, organization."

Sounds boring, right?

[cacophonish]

"Oh."

God. That's totally boring. It honestly sounds like it might be Jeff's own personal hell.

"Uh. So. Do you... like... doing that stuff?"

Does a question like that totally out him as someone who had the privilege to swan off and follow his dreams?

[henchgal]

Yeah, it kinda does, sorry.

"It pays the bills, and I like having health insurance. But it's not what I wanted to grow up to do when I was a kid."

[cacophonish]

Judging by the look on Jeff's face, it's probably pretty obvious that health insurance doesn't really register on his own personal hierarchy of needs. In fact, he doesn't even know if he's still insured.

Is he? Fuck. He'd call his dad and ask, but there's an alternate reality and a quarter-century gap separating them. And ultimately, it's not like it fucking matters, anyway.

"What'd you want to do? I mean, really want to do. This is, like, a new start, right?"

[henchgal]

She snorts softly at that question. "Right, see, when you have a chronic health condition that requires regular treatment, you don't just got to hare off and make fresh starts without thinking about that."

He sounds very, very naive to her right now. Sheltered. One of the lucky ones. She can envy that.

[cacophonish]

Jeff might protest the observation, but the truth is he is sheltered, in some ways. Maybe it's one part luck, and one part privilege. He moved out of his childhood home as soon as he left school, and he pays his share of the rent and gets by with his friends, sure. And running in the circles he does, dealing with his own personal problem, he's seen and experienced some really fucked up things...

But he doesn't know anything about the little mundane parts of adulthood. Taxes and insurance, credit scores and planning for the future. Doesn't know about them, and doesn't think about them.

So when Meredith points out the whole chronic health issue, Jeff seems to wilt a little, lowering his slice. "Oh. That's a fucking drag." He's sincere, at least, even if it's not the most eloquent expression of sympathy. "Hey, at least you can climb that corporate ladder, right? Get to the top and--" He mimics swinging a sword, sort of, with a little swish of his fingers and a sound effect. "--cut off the boss's head and get his power." Like in Highlander. "That's how it works, right?"

Kidding. Totally.

[henchgal]

"Decapitation's so messy. I think backstabbing is more common these days." In one sense of the word or another. "But you're right, it is a fucking drag, and I hope you never know what it's like."

She means it. Not that she's never had the bitter thought that she wishes everyone knew what it's like for, but really, she does spend a decent amount of time living vicariously through her peers.

[cacophonish]

He snaps his fingers. "Backstabbing. Yeah. More civilized."

Jeff nods, taking a moment to eat a few more bites of his pizza, mulling over what to say next. Of course he's curious about what she likes, what she studied, what she would rather be doing, but there's always that question of if it's a welcome discussion, or if he'd just be poking at an exposed nerve.

If something had pulled him away from his dreams, forced him into some stuffy corporate setting just to survive, would he want to go around talking about how he almost made it as a musician? Or would he just want to bury it and move on?

"I guess... it's nice that the ADI's giving people jobs and stuff." It's sort of lukewarm praise. Judging by his tone, he doesn't think much of the organization. "Though X-Files made this shit look a lot more fun."

[henchgal]

"Nice? I'm not sure I'd go that far. I mean, I think we're expendable to them because we don't come from this world. If we get killed, it's no big deal, there's no one who needs to get notified. It's a little like undocumented immigrants. We're not getting jobs out of the kindness of their hearts."

Surprise, she's very aware of how capitalism is inherently exploitative and she's caught in a system that's sucking her dry like a juicebox.

[cacophonish]

Jeff breathes out a laugh in absolute relief. "Oh, thank fuck. I was really reaching to find something nice to say, 'cause--" He waves a hand vaguely. "--I dunno. You're stuck working with them and that sucks." Jeff shakes his head, picking some cheese off what remains of his pizza before he drops it back onto his plate, seemingly finished with the meal. "I don't like 'em. I mean, I never thought about it like that, like the immigrant thing?" More, he's resentful of the ADI as somebody whose identity is steeped in magic. "But you're right."

[henchgal]

"It's a mess, but I'm used to working in situations that are messes, with bosses who aren't telling me everything. A pawn in the greater game. If you've honestly managed to keep yourself completely out of the rat race, then good on you. I've just lost faith in the world. Safer that way."

[cacophonish]

"Yeah... I'm used to a different kind of messy." There's some trace of melancholy in his voice as he admits that, but he quickly shakes it off and smiles, edging away from saying anything real by adding, "Like, when I used to wait tables? I swear, everyone I worked with would slit my throat or push me off a bridge if it meant they could be in the next Spielberg movie or whatever."

[henchgal]

Meredith lets out a startled laugh. "Were you working in LA? Also, would you have done the same to them, for that kind of opportunity?"

She can't picture Jeff with that sort of ruthlessness to him, but you never know.

[cacophonish]

"Mmhm," he hums, smiling. "Born and raised."

Meredith's right, though; he definitely doesn't have that ruthlessness. Jeff laughs at the thought and shakes his head.

"Naaah. I just let my natural charm do the work for me." Okay, that's not true. Jeff may not have ever dipped his toes in the corporate rat race, but it doesn't mean he's not a hard worker. His band isn't just some hobby, or a half-assed fantasy at playing rockstar. "And it helps that I'm pretty good with a guitar."