2020-10-12 - Philosophy Over Flames

It's cool enough now the firepits are welcome. One of them is blazing away merrily, not a huge crackling bonfire, but sizable.....and shimmering with strange colors, as if someone had added one of those little chemical packets designed to do just that. It gives the circle of light it casts a strange air...and Joe's down there with a bottle of cider in hand, gazing into the flames. The long face is calm, solemn, but there's a hint of good humor in the pale eyes. He's dressed in a dark plaid flannel shirt over a paler t-shirt, dark jeans....long legs stretched out before him, slouched down in the wooden chair he's claimed.

Vic isn't working tonight, but she's here haunting TiBS anyway. She's been keeping an eye on it on her off days now and then, just sweeping the place for any sign of Reyes people, or the locals working for him. The tall blonde is in a dark V-neck blouse, under a burgundy leather jacket, with jeans and boots as she makes her way out to the firepits. She has a bottle of beer in hand and her eyes flit to Joe, as if wondering if she should approach, or leave him to his pensiveness.

She chooses the former, making her way over to settle into a chair nearby. "Cavanaugh. You ok? How is Javier after," she makes a hand sign, likely indicating the disastrous Prom fiasco. "He looked pretty banged up when we dragged him out of there."

His own hands are scratched up, worn - they've got streaks of liquid bandage over them. "He's battered but doing okay. Wouldn't go to the hospital," he sighs, as he glances up. "I'm okay, other'n scratched up some." And he displays those long-fingered hands. At least the tattoos don't seem to have been damaged. Then there's a little smile. "What about you?" he says, quietly. "You doin' okay?"

With the warmth of the firepit, Vic shrugs out of her jacket. The blouse is sleeveless, and he can see the entire box's worth of Band-Aids, all emblazoned with "My Little Pony" stuff, covering her arms. "Yeah, those brambles were a bitch," she mutters. She sips her beer, sinking back in the chair and watching the colorful flames. "That was some seriously twisted shit."

She frowns and looks over at him. "That wasn't me. Not the real high school age me, at least. I was a good kid, top five percent of my class, ran track and played basketball." Of course she did, being as tall as she is. "I kept my nose super clean to get into the Police Academy. It was more like, me when I moved here, but reduced to a teenager." Drugs, alcohol, troublemaking, yep.

"I wasn't out enough to go to prom with a boyfriend," There's a whimsical lilt to Joe's voice at that....and a hint of wistfulness. "I was a student at a Catholic military school. I only went to one prom, with the girl I was dating then. I was pretty uptight back when." Hard to picture Commander Laidback all wound up, but then....life in Gray Harbor has certainly knocked some edges off. "I was even a Boy Scout," he adds, glancing down at his wounded hand. "Yeah, that whole thing was a mess. That's one of the weirder Dreams I've been in..."

"Same. I'm kinda imagining that Javier wasn't too far off the mark from that angry young man we saw though," Vic notes with a chuckle. "Not sure I recognized everyone else. I mean Rosencrantz, definitely. The baker guy I think?" She looks amused at how different so many of them looked in their youth. "You were always the handsome boy next door though, weren't you, Joe?"

"No, that was....not far off," Joe concedes, slowly. "I met Javier when he was...not much older than the kid we saw there." There's something bleak in his face - looking back through all those years at that teenage Marine, that bundle of hurt and rage and determination to fight, and how he warped that life out of shape. "I was a real nerdy kid," he says, shaking his head. "I....mos'ly did things on my own. I honestly don't know how I survived all those years living in close quarters."

The strange colors of the firepit attract attention. Or, at least, they attract Alexander's attention from where he was staring at the ocean on the beach. He approaches the bar warily, like he expects to find monsters. Or maybe just Chads. Either way, he recognizes the two around the pit, and slouches his way in that direction. He doesn't look particularly injured, although a faint limp hasn't gone away from when he had his cast. His shirt and jeans are dark, the olive green army surplus jacket the only real spot of color on him. "Hey," he says, quietly. "You're both alive. That's good." A flicker of a smile.

Vic listens, curiously. "So this was...something of the Veil's idea of who we might have been, if we'd lived here, for those of us who weren't local?" she muses. "That makes some level of sense. We lived in places that weren't as thin, where maybe They couldn't sense us as easily, when we were teens. So they had to improvise."

Her head turns towards Alexander on his approach and she frowns for a moment. "Alexander 'the snitch' Clayton'," she says sternly. Then the act breaks and she chuckles. "Come grab a seat. Good to see you made it out ok too."

"I.....I didn't get the shine until I was middle-aged. I had no powers that I know of as a child or a teenager. I imagine I didn't register with Them, if They are cognizant of people in places that aren't thin," Joe's voice is musing, too. A little abstracted, his head bowed. "But yeah, you're right. They work with memory, but They Themselves didn't know or remember...."

Then Joe's lifting his head to blink over at Alexander. "Oh, hey there," he says, amiably. "You doin' okay? Yeah, it'll take more than somethin' like that to kill me." Said with no braggadocio, just that quiet confidence.

Alexander freezes at Vic's frown, his shoulders instinctively hunching, and when she speaks sternly, it looks like he might turn tail and skitter off into the darkness like a startled crab. But when she chuckles, he hesitates, and offers a brief, tentative smile. "If you don't want to be caught, Miss Grey, then be better at crime," he says, dryly, before moving to take a seat. His head cocks as he tries to catch up with the trailing edge of the conversation thus far. "Hmm. Yeah. Even in Gray Harbor, a lot of people don't discover their abilities until they're put through some sort of high emotion - usually adolescence, but not always. Even some townies don't manifest until later in life." He pauses to lean in and warm his hands at the fire. "Or they just flicker once, then put it out of their mind for the rest of their lives."

Vic grunts in agreement with Joe on this train of thought they've embarked on, regarding why they were so different from their actual teen selves at Prom. When Alexander adds in his thoughts, she nods. "Mine came when I was eight, when my mother passed away. But my dad, he has the tiniest bit of shine and he isn't at all aware of it. Has had it all my life. I never brought it up to him."

Joe cocks his head, as he peers at Vic. It gives him that oddly bird-like air. "....how does he not know?" he wonders. "Though I wonder if I always had it, but in...like some latent form. If that explains why I was such a good pilot." Then he smiles, wryly, the scar on his lip pulling it a little out of shape. "Like Luke Skywalker being so skilled, because he was touching the Force without knowing it." Alexander gets a quizzical look. "How c'n you just flicker once? Can this ability really be suppressed like that? Mine didn't show up until after my crash. I was sure all the weirdness was just....brain damage, for ages."

Alexander nods, slowly, to Vic. "That makes sense." A curious look towards Joseph, although he waits to answer until the approaching server has been given his order - a cheap bottle of beer - and is walking back to the bar. His attention returns to the former astronaut. "It's not hard. You have to want to use it on some level. Some people never feel the need, or they use it instinctively, like the guy who always has a hunch about who's cheating him. He doesn't think of it beyond that. Some people don't want to know about it - manifestation can be horrific, and sometimes you get a taste of that and decide, 'fuck no, that genie's going back in the fucking bottle'." His smile is humorless. "Those are mostly the people who manage to move out of the Harbor, though. I bet they have fulfilling, normal lives somewhere far away from here."

Vic ponders how to explain it to Joe. "It's like...he has that tiny firefly flicker of shine, but none of the Gifts that go with it. Like he's unshaped in that respect. He could maybe learn to use it? But he's never realized any of it exists, or exists in him, so he doesn't. And his spark is so small, and he lives far enough from a thin point, that he's never fallen into a Dream or the like." She'd fallen into a Dream after her mother's death. Her grief and torment had been like tasty dessert to Them.

He worries at his lip, rolling that scar under a canine, unthinkingly. A new habit or fidget, that. "That does make sense," he says, to both of them. "IF the potential's there, but there's no reason for it to crystallize or take form. No reason to refine it from ore into something usable...." He offers over a little keychain bottle opener, gleaming in the firelight. "I'd'a....if you asked me when it was new, I mighta tried to do just that. Repress it, get rid of it. But I couldn't. They found me fast enough an' kep' me under Their thumb." His tone is only mild, determinedly even.

"And that's good," Alexander murmurs to Vic. "He doesn't need it. He's happy without it. When you start to use it, it becomes harder not to use it more. Not because it's addictive in a chemical sense, or anything else, but--" he shrugs, "it's useful, and it's magic. Who doesn't, in their heart of hearts, want to do magic?" Bitterness and wistfulness mingle in his words, almost in equal quantities. He shakes it off, then studies Joe. "I'm sorry. I wish we could protect each other from Them."

"They made life bad for me early on, so I kept from telling my Dad what he had. I don't want him to know, to use it, to be food for Them," Vic admits. Alexander knows better than most, how protective she is of her father. She smiles to the PI. "Yeah, we all wanted to get that letter from Hogwarts, I know."

He lifts his hand, fingertips up, as if he'd cradle something there.....but what comes is that web of lightning. Little blue-white arcs from fingertip to fingertip, and a strange satisfaction in his face. Something distant and odd in the blue eyes. "I don't know," he says, softly. "Now, that I'd trade it for anything. Not for all the pain They've given me." As if it were a gift, but then...isn't it, for him?

Then Joe brings his fingertips together and there's a little shower of snapping sparks, gone. "It's not that it's useful," he adds. "It's that it's wonderful."

Alexander nods again to Vic. "I tried to tell my parents. But neither of them have abilities, so they couldn't believe me. It was," his entire face tightens, "unpleasant." Then his beer is arriving, so he takes it with a murmured thanks. As the server disappears again, he returns his attention to Joe, and catches the glimmer of lightning. "It's good to feel it's worth it, I guess." The faintest hint of a smile at the last. "Awful. Terrific."

"As a kid, it was the most incredible thing. I'd had my mother taken away from me and, although I'd have gladly given it up to have her back, it felt like a small consolation prize at least." Vic sips her beer, staring into the flames with a peaceful expression. "Or like my mother had gifted it to me with her passing. Kids can rationalize the craziest shit. Magic comes more naturally to them, because they don't have an adult's notions of the impossible."

"That reminds me of a series of books I loved as a child, about young wizards. The youngest have the most raw power because of exactly that." He settles his hand in his lap, finds his cider, takes a pull. "I don't know that it's much of a consolation prize for not goin' to the moon, but hell, it's way better'n nothin', findin' out that I really was a Jedi." There's that humorous cant to his brows. "But.....wonder's always been worth it, in my book."

"I hated it," Alexander admits, quietly. He takes a pull from his bottle. "I couldn't control it, most of the time when I was a kid. Just had everyone's emotional shit dumped on me. I guess I was curious, because I kept using it, but I didn't know how to...process any of that. And before Gohl, our ranges were longer. I could get half the neighborhood's rage, fear, pain, grief stuck inside my head when all I wanted to see was whether someone liked me." A humorless chuckle. "Add that to getting Lost a lot, and I desperately wanted it to stop, but I didn't...I couldn't ever bring myself to cut it off. I don't have that kind of will, I guess." He takes another drink. "It's better to have a, uh, better view of it. I think."

"Yeah, I didn't get the telepathy thing til a lot later in life. I imagine getting that sprung on you as a kid would be horrible. Knowing what people really feel towards you, knowing they're lying, or worse, telling the truth when they're being hateful," Vic says with a tight smile. "I didn't get lost as often, in Portland. And when I did it wasn't always horrible either. This place though, it's so different."

"I'm sure I'd'a hated it, had I got it so young," Cavanaugh allows, quietly. "But....since it came when I'd had my adult life, when I had the career I wanted it, and it wasn't what ended it...yeah. No control, adolescent emotion....." He pulls a face at that. "Too much truth and not enough social lubrication, that's hard as hell. But no, I don't know that I'd'a been able to give it up myself. Sure haven't now." Another roll of his lip under his tooth.

Alexander smiles at Vic. "Yeah. Portland is better. I went to college in Eugene. It was...very quiet, there. Everything was just whispers and hints. Not shouts. Did have a very bad Dream there...but I think it was as bad as it was because I thought they'd stopped. That I'd escaped Gray Harbor, you know?" This time, it's Joseph who gets the nod. "I've thought about it. Just...refusing to use it. Patrick did. He thinks that we're punished for using it. And that if we just stopped, the Dark Men wouldn't bother us anymore. It seems to work, for him. I think."

"It's a dangerous game," Vic murmurs, swirling the remnants of her bottled beer. "If we don't use it, in the hopes that They leave us alone, and They don't? We have no real skill with our abilities. If we do need these things to fight Them, but it also feeds them? What then?"

Now Joe's looking thoughtfully at Alexander. "Does it really work like that?" he wonders. "I mean, how long you gotta wait 'fore you know it does? I.....it's like Itzhak being so sure we have to defy Them. I've yet to hear anyone say that we can hurt Them in any real way. It's like...." He taps a fingernail thoughtfully against the bottle. "All we can do here is outlast and survive...."

Alexander hesitates. "I don't know," he admits to Joe. "I think Miss Grey makes a good point regarding the consequences of ignoring your abilities only to find that you need them. But...I think it's also true that the less you use them, the less you attract Them. And," he sighs, "I don't think we can fight the Shadows. Not in any meaningful way. I don't know that they exist on this plane in a way that we can even fathom. I've never seen them. I've...sensed them, once or twice. When someone allied with them called them to feed, I could feel something horrif...no, horrific isn't a word that works. It's beyond horror. It was a malicious hunger that would swallow the whole damned world if you let it. It was an abomination, in the purest sense of the world." His eyes reflect a little of the empty terror he felt as the fire dances in them, and he shivers.

"But even then, I don't know. I don't really have any solid facts. Maybe the Doctor, Collector, or Director would. If the Revisionist is right about them being the sources of our abilities."

"Either way, this place is dangerous enough without those otherworldly fucks interfering," Vic mutters. Damn Reyes and his hostile takeover. "Everyone has to be extra careful out there." She gives Joe a meaningful look at those words.

Now his gaze is clouded, as he looks back into the fire - head bent a little. "It was horrible. I spent more'n half a year in the Asylum as food for Them. Hunger is the word. Like the Old Gods in Lovecraft, things to whom light and life are only fodder..." His shoulders are hunched, but he moves no closer to the flames.

Vic's comment has him looking at her, expression rueful. "D'you think They have something to do with that? I mean, that power struggle that's going on. Reyes and his men, they Shine, and they know what it is and what it does. They could feel it when I used it..."

"I think we don't need extradimensional horrors to encourage people to kill and hurt other people for money and power," Alexander says, his voice dry. "I don't know that it's even how they operate...they don't really seem all that," he pauses for a drink, "planful, you know? I think maybe this Reyes guy or one of his lieutenants stands out enough that he recognizes how much stronger he is here, and that makes a shitty little failing lumber town a more attractive target. Especially since, if you notice, the state cops and the feds aren't remotely interested in us, even with a dead Chief of Police."

"Only a few of them shine. I don't know that removing Felix from power is really advantageous to them. Felix is a lead brick when it comes to this stuff, so he's neither feeding nor fighting them." Vic tips her bottle at Alexander. "And that. They don't seem to have a stake in human business or the underside of it. Money isn't a thing to them. They may be tweaking the players a little to make those of us they do want to feed on suffer? But I don't think they are actively part of this street war."

"I have noticed that. Nearly anywhere else and we'd have the FBI all over the place like ants on a gummibear," Joe's voice is low. Not as dismayed about the lack as he might be - the appearance of the Feds would be plenty of trouble for Javier. "But yeah, I hear ya. They're not...They don't use strategy, not like that, do They? Reyes, though....I think you're right."

There's a shiver from him, despite the warmth of the fire. Perhaps at some memory.

"They made a cracking good run at killing Monaghan," Alexander points out. Does he sound a little like he wished it'd succeeded? He does, yes. Or at least, there's a hint of resignation that it failed. "And although I've never had a conversation with the man, I don't think he's going to agree to split the town fifty-fifty or anything. They have to remove him. And the people who are truly loyal to him, so that the others will fall in line." A slide of his eyes towards Vic's face, before his attention turns back to Joe and his bottle. "...I'm sorry. That they hurt you. You didn't...deserve to be hurt."

"Either way, shit is bad out there, so be careful. I don't have a whole lot of people I enjoy a beer with, so it would suck to lose any of you," Vic declares, in her grumpy way of admitting she might have friends. Alexander's words make her back stiffen a bit. She has a lot more at stake here, than her own safety, or Felix's. If Felix goes down, her father may be back on Ojeda's hitlist.

"No, Reyes is out there winner take all," Joe agrees. He tilts his head at Alexander, a gesture not quite a nod. Something bitter in his face, for a moment, before he suppresses it. "Thank you," he settles on, eventually. Then he's chugging the rest of the cider, setting the bottle down by his chair, but he shows no signs of getting up and departing. Vic gets a rueful little smile. "I think it'd suck to lose me, too," he retorts, teasingly. "Guys like me're hard to find."

Alexander looks startled that Vic might count him as someone to enjoy a beer with, and he looks down at the bottle in his hand in bewilderment, as if someone might have switched it out for some Everclear or something when he wasn't paying attention. As it stubbornly remains piss-weak beer, he clears his throat awkwardly, and mutters, "I would not want to see either of you - or a lot of other people in this town - die, either. Especially not at the hand of these assholes. So. Don't do that." Joe's teasing remarks startle a laugh out of him. "You do seem to be unique," he agrees, his voice lightening, as well.

Vic laughs quietly at Joe's words. "You really are a piece of work, Cavanaugh. I'd flirt with you, but I think it'd just go over your head." She sits up and rises to put on her coat. "I think I'm going to go for a walk. I'm still in Kelly's guest room while I make the new house livable, and I need to clear my head a bit." She gives Alexander a smile. "Dad says hi, by the way. Is glad to know you're doing ok."

"You got no idea," Joe tells Vic, more cheerfully. As if determined to keep the conversation somewhere lighter. "And I dunno, I'm pretty tall." But he gives her an upnod as she rises. "You have a good night." Then he gives Alexander an amused look, from under his lashes. "Damn right," he agrees. "Broke the mold when they made me." Surely Ruiz would agree with that.

"I find that it's important to tell someone that you're about to flirt with them. Keeps them from misunderstanding, and it makes the rejections very clear," Alexander says, deadpan and apparently serious, but for the lurking amusement in his dark eyes. He widens his eyes when Vic rises. "I...uh. Oh?" Another awkward clearing of the throat. "Tell him hi. Um. From me. And that I hope he's doing well." He looks embarrassed and pleased all at once, trying to hide it by giving Joe a sidelong look. "You're interesting," he agrees, hastily. "Intimidating. But interesting."

Vic smirks at Joe. "Maybe another time. I'm covered in My Little Pony bandaids, I'm not gonna even pretend that's attractive right now." She nods to Alexander, "I'll let him know. Stay safe out there." Then she's taking her leave.

"Exactly," Joe agrees, with an expression of mock innocence. The blue eyes are gleaming with more than firelight, however. The hint of a smirk vanishes. "Intimidating? How'm I intimidating?" Maybe he's measuring himself against the standard set by Javier, not one easily met. The question seems genuine, though. Vic gets a last little salute, fingertips to temples.

"I think she's wrong," Alexander muses at Vic's back. "I don't think there's anything unattractive about My Little Pony bandaids." He stretches his legs out, sighs, then quirks an eyebrow at Joe. "You don't know?" He sweeps the man up and down with his eyes. "You're calm, self-possessed, confident. You're attractive, personable, and as sane as anyone gets around here. You're apparently a soldier, a scientist, and a writer, thus hitting the trifecta of personal competence. It's intimidating. You're intimidating."

There's that wicked glint again. "Maybe I'm just fishin' for compliments," he says, scratching gently at one of the gouges on his hand, as if it itched. "And....I s'pose so. Though I was a sailor, not a real soldier. I only fought on the ground a few times." He takes a deep breath, sighs. "'minds me of some of the conversations I had with Rosencrantz, when I was new here. He an' at least've come to some kinna peace."

Alexander looks blank at the idea of fishing for compliments. "Oh," he says, at last. "I hope I provided them, then?" He rolls his shoulders, and adds wryly, "It really doesn't matter when it comes to overall 'cool' factor. And yeah. Itzhak doesn't think too highly of himself. It's stupid, because he's brilliant, but I guess he doesn't always believe that. The fact that you're having sex with Javier probably doesn't help." He takes another drink from the bottle, and looks at the fire. "I'm glad you two are getting along, though. Itzhak deserves good friends."

A bob of that curly head. "It is stupid, and he is brilliant. But he's really insecure, and it was a lot of friction between us when I showed up. I mean, I get it, I'm someone from Javier's past, reappearing, right when things are going well for them." He sighs, lets his head loll back against the chair. "And no, it sure doesn't. But all I can do is...give them some space, and be Itzhak's friend for real, not just 'cause he's a gatekeeper to Javier. I'm glad you're their friend, too."

Alexander nods, thinking that over. "Makes sense." He gives Joe a long, considering look. "That's a good strategy. I guess. I don't really do much in the way of convoluted romantic arrangements." There's a shrug of his shoulders. "And of course I am. They're wonderful. I'm lucky they want to hang around me, sometimes." He finishes off his beer, and rises, himself. "I'm glad you got out of the prom dream okay, Joseph. Don't die." And then he's starting to walk off - not into the bar to get another drink, or try to pester Bennie or Easton, but out into the night.