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

[11calls]

Alex laughs softly, "I think it depends on who you ask and their level of pretension, honestly. I only find the weird ones to be different, because they're you know weird. Like throwing coffee or odd fruit or whatever into them. There's some great ciders though. Ones that are local, I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that there are, but..." But one doesn't normally think of that when they think of Boston right? And Alex definitely can't help but to think of Gloucester as Boston even when it's really not. It's just a part of her considering basically the whole state of Washington to be a part of Seattle.

And speaking of: "Seattle. I've been there for a while but I'm actually from Vancouver." Which explains the accent that's there tripping over itself on some words. Alex herself picks up another nacho, balancing cheese on it very carefully. "So what about you? Where are you from?" Cause clearly it's not from here, and Alex would have asked even if he hadn't started it. Curiosity and all of that.

[cacophonish]

Cider, huh. Jeff hums thoughtfully and nods. "It's too hot for cider, though, right?" Apparently, his mind goes straight to hot apple cider. Hard cider hasn't totally made its comeback yet, when he's from. Or maybe it just hasn't made its way into his orbit. In any case, he's thinking about fall and cozy things now.

"Ohhh, Seattle... I've been up there a couple times. Never made it all the way up to Canada though. It's, like, really cold there, right?" He goes for another chip, hand hovering over the nacho platter as he picks out the one with optimal levels of guacamole. "I'm from LA." He smiles wryly and adds, holding his chip up in a toast, "Here's to the West Coast."

[11calls]

"Yeah, I definitely wouldn't to be drinking a hot apple cider right now. But these ones are normally served cold. They're kinda like beer but most of the time they taste a lot better. Apparently there's a good...brewery..." It's clear from the look on Alex face that she doesn't think that's the right name for it but she doesn't have a better one so she just adds a questioning: "I guess? At least that's what some guy at the bar told me. I did try one that I really liked though. It was called a Rickey and is based on a raspberry lime rickey, but it's a cider." Alex would tell him that he should try it, but she doesn't know if he's old enough or not. Sometimes she's just bad at ages, so she's just not going to assume anymore about it.

"Yeah? What were you doing up in my neck of the woods." And then because she's Alex, and there's always been a small part of her that had wanted to be a music journalist until she realized what a pain in the ass it would be in order to be one in a place like Seattle with everyone else wanting to be one. Finding her way into working for PNWS was probably a wiser choice in the long run. Mostly anyway. But taking into account how many people always wanted to be involved in music there since the beginning of grunge, Alex takes a chance: "were you in a band?"

[cacophonish]

Oh, he's definitely interested in that. Okay, note to self, try alcoholic cider sometime.

"I guess I'll have to try it. Once I get a fake ID." He rolls his eyes and adds, "I'm not underage. Everyone just thinks mine's a fake already. I gotta say I'm, like... born in..." Hang on. Math. He scrunches his nose as the number hits him. "2000?"

A long ways from 1974. A year that definitely reads THE FUTURE. As for the question...

"Yeah, I'm in a band." Jeff smiles, because he knows it makes him sound like some grunge groupie, wannabe Kurt Cobain who decided to make a pilgrimage as soon as he listened to Nevermind. "We were on the West Coast leg of a tour, opening for guys waaaay more successful than us."

[11calls]

Being here has meant getting used to a lot, including the idea that she's five years older than she had been before if she was from here, but having someone who is simultaneously a decade older and a decade younger than she is seems like a scifi question better left in the hands of Nicodemus Silver rather than Alex's own. But that said, Alex does give him a wince. "Jesus that sucks. I can't imagine but if you need someone to pick you up some booze or weed," because that was also a legal thing here which some parts of Alex still can't believe. "I'm definitely not opposed to that."

Alex is also suitably impressed when he mentions opening for someone bigger than they were. "Anyone I might have heard of? I mean given the way that the worlds we come from it's entirely possible we have had different bands. But maybe you'd be famous as an adult?" Yes, that's slightly terrifying to think about, but Alex is just going to continue to ignore that whole thing.

[cacophonish]

He laughs at the offer, nodding. "And I'm definitely not opposed to the booze-and-weed pickup service. You could make a killing, I bet." Considering he can't possibly be the only displaced young adult in this predicament.

"Hey, I am an adult," he points out, his voice light and teasing and without any offense. But it's an interesting point, and one he's sort of... afraid to face. If he looked up the Nervous Tix on the internet, would he find anything in this world? If he looked up his bandmates, would some version of them still exist, the way David Bowie seems to have some kind of universal crossover existence?

If there was a Jeff Calhoun of this world, would he be alive and thriving, or dead at 25?

He doesn't want to think about it. He stalls by grabbing another chip and sticking it in his mouth first.

"Sonic Youth." Who knows if they ever existed where Alex is from. "I mean, we were, like, the opening act, you know? Like we didn't even open for Sonic Youth, really, it was like, we were opening for the guys opening for Sonic Youth." He smiles dreamily. "It was fucking incredible though."

[11calls]

Alex just laughs in a flustered little way about the delivery service. "I don't know if that's who I wanna be, you know. Definitely don't want to do jail time. But I don't mind doing it occasionally for a few people. Maybe I'll ask you to do referrals and pay me a cut though." Alex is half joking, but also half serious because while she definitely is good with her research gig at API, she also doesn't want to shut down any sort of avenue of payment in case this turns out to be less Strand Institute and more Daeva Corp. Her own idea has less than a year left on it, so thank god her birthday was just before she was taken.

"Oh wow. That's really impressive. It's too bad you never got to Canada, my teenage self probably would have definitely hit that tour." Alex settles back into the squishy comfort of the booth, holding her coffee and grabbing a chip as well. "Are you gonna find a band here, do you think? I mean we're not that far from Boston, and there's probably some small bars here." Honestly Alex hopes that he does, even if it's a small place. To her it sounds like Jeff loves music like she loves journalism, and honestly she can't imagine never being able to do it again. Alex definitely doesn't want him to have to go through it either.

[cacophonish]

"We'll help each other out," he agrees, teasingly, just in time for the server to come back bearing a plate of breakfast foods. Time to go all hush hush on the subjects of shady businesses and time travel.

As soon as he smells the eggs and toast, it's like it finally clicks in his stomach just how hungry he is. Oh. Right. This is going to be the first actual meal he's had all day.

Once they're alone again, he grins down at his plate, trying to picture that scenario: playing a gig in Canada, with Alex as one of the faces in the crowd. "It's so fucking weird to think about, right? How I'm like, technically older than you."

But anyway. His grin dims a little as he considers the question. It hurts to think about. Even if he'd been losing his shit, little by little, day by day, for the past few months, he still had some momentum going. The Tix's star was rising. Hell, they were getting ready to record another album and now...

They're home, and he's here.

"I want to," he admits with a shrug. "I don't think I could live without performing. I just... I don't know how to do it without Ally." For clarity, he adds, "She's my best friend. We started the band together. The Nervous Tix."

[11calls]

It's somewhat of a second nature now for Alex to keep quiet about what she's talking about when a server or someone else comes by and is too close. While the reasoning may not be as important back home as it is here, she's also received too many looks from random people talking about demons or some such thing to keep doing it. Somehow talking about demons and the end of the world makes people think you're crazy, who knew? But she just takes a long sip of her coffee when he'd mentioned the age thing.

"I guess if that's the weirdest thing that we have to deal with here we should count it as a bonus, right?" Of course it wasn't and they both knew it, so she's going to just ignore the rest of what was happening outside in this weird world for a little while while she's talking to him.

What Alex does do is search her memory for any band that could be called The Nervous Tix. Despite being a radio DJ in college (she had to get her start somewhere) she couldn't recall seeing a CD or digital download for them anywhere. "I haven't heard of The Nervous Tix." Alex doesn't know if this is good news or if it happens to be bad, so she tries to keep her voice as neutral as possible. "I mean, if everything old is new again, you can get a guitar and do 'anyway here's Wonderwall.'" That bit? Definitely a joke.

[cacophonish]

"Wonderwall?" Jeff's just a few months shy of that song's release, blissfully oblivious to the near future, where it will totally take over the airwaves and get played to death.

He breaks up the yolk and takes a forkful of egg, mulling over his future of insignificance, or nonexistence, at least where Alex's world is concerned. Whatever happened to all that Nervous Tix momentum? Did all their hard work composing, practicing, performing, touring, recording-- did it come out to a big fucking nothing? Or did they have one hit, before crashing into obscurity?

Maybe he never existed in Alex's world, because there's only one Jeff Calhoun in the entire multiverse. Or maybe...

"Maybe I'm dead. In your world, I mean. Maybe I died young." He says it lightly, like it's a joke, and definitely not something he's spent way too much time thinking about. Something that had just started to feel inevitable and imminent and unavoidable before he was plucked out of his timeline and dropped here. "Maybe I died opening for Sonic Youth," he laughs.

It's not really funny.