Dreamscape, Sunday Afternoon Fandom Time

[withoutverona]

"What are you doing here?"

Romeo would have been faster to answer the question if he'd known where here was. It was a bedroom, and one that was no doubt lovely when it wasn't in a shambles. But it was in a shambles now -- bedclothes tossed everywhere, strawberries spilling from an overturned table, debris and glass on the floor. He turned away from the mess to see who addressed him. The slender brunette bore no less hostility in her eyes than anyone else here, but she was the first to speak to him.

He shook his head. "I know not. My name is -"

"Idiot. I know who you are," the woman -- Mal -- claimed. "But why are you here like this? You're a boy." She came toward Romeo before he could answer, something almost hypnotic in her slow walk. "Do you still know what it is to be a lover? To be half of a whole?"

"Since I was sixteen, I've not been anything else," Romeo answered. It was possible he'd spent the last four years waiting for someone to ask him that question. "Aye. I know. Too well."

"Then you might guess my riddle," Mal said, and lightly touched his chest. "You're waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you don't know for sure. But... it doesn't matter. How can it not matter to you where that train will take you?"

Romeo seldom heard his own voice from outside his head, and the man who spoke next stayed obscured and unrecognizable in shadows. Otherwise, he would have had more to think about than the riddle.

"Because you'll be together."

"Because you'll be together," Romeo repeated eagerly, thinking it a rather beautiful answer -- and was completely ignored by the couple as a slight, dark-haired girl entered the room and Mal's questioning began anew.

As for Romeo, he was taking a miraculously unbroken bottle of champagne and going off to look for Jim.

[OOC: Bits borrowed from Inception. For the other dreamverse hitchhiker, should he want!]

Comments

[answer2bheard.livejournal.com]

Jim had found his way out to the rocky beaches of this new corner of whatever it was that he and Romeo had found themselves in, and was smiling out almost wistfully at the waves.

They weren't alone here, he was fairly certain. There had been footprints in the sand that hadn't been put there by himself and Romeo, though whoever else had been along this beach hadn't been walking alone, either. And the whole place had a sort of surreal quality to it, massive buildings that couldn't possibly still be standing, reaching into the sky, occasionally breaking apart and falling into the sea.

He found himself wanting to be at the tops of those buildings looking down untouched as they crumbled, but the view from the bottom, his boots in hand as the waves lapped against his ankles, was still amazing enough for him to lose all track of time. Whether he'd been watching those crumbling towers for hours or days, he wasn't quite certain. But he could probably continue doing so for years more. Maybe he'd build a few towers of his own. There was something about this place that made him confident that he could.

[withoutverona]

Romeo jogged up to Jim, a bit breathless and still with that bottle of champagne in one hand.

"There are other people here," he said, almost triumphant about it. "Ones who can speak -- though they seem to speak in poetry and nonsense."

[answer2bheard.livejournal.com]

"I'll take poetry and nonsense, just so long as they're not shooting at us," Jim decided, turning and grinning at Romeo. "I mean, this whole place is kind of like that anyhow, right? These buildings are unreal."

There was a pause, and then he blinked at the bottle in Romeo's hand.

"A peace offering from the poets?"

[withoutverona]

"In a way," Romeo said, shrugging. "The poets seemed not to be at peace, and the room they were in was in an upheaval. The bottle was liberated as a survivor."

It was a good vintage; this justified theft.

"And I see what you mean," he added softly, staring hard at the crumbling buildings. "What people would build a place like this and leave it to rot? It is beyond my imagination."

[answer2bheard.livejournal.com]

"I don't know," Jim replied, turning again and looking up as another slab of architecture cascaded into the water. "It's like an entire world, here, all wrapped up into those buildings. They have that feeling to them, don't they? Like whoever built them spent lifetimes making them real, and then just walked away."

Jim was feeling maybe a little poetic himself, today.

"What I wouldn't give for my solar surfer, here. Can you imagine what those buildings must look like, up close?"

[withoutverona]

"They seem as if they contain someone's world entire," Romeo agreed softly. "As if whoever built them cherished them up to the moment they had to turn their backs."

He tossed a pebble idly into the water, watching the ripples spread out. "Could we build a surfer? It feels as if we may have a lifetime here, too."

But, somehow, that was all right.

[answer2bheard.livejournal.com]

"I don't see why not," Jim mused, smiling back at Romeo again. "I've been making them since I was a little kid. If we've got a lifetime here, I should be able to make it up as I go, even if there isn't much of the same stuff we have back home on Montressor."

Now, could he get it built before the buildings all vanished into the sea?

Or, better still, could they keep the buildings from falling long enough for them to be able to fly around them? It felt almost as though they could, in the same way that it felt like they might just spend a lifetime here...

[withoutverona]

"You can do that," Romeo said, flopping down onto a bar of sand and smiling toward the crumbling buildings. They should have been horrible, but there was such powerful beauty there. "I'll pick a building, and spend my life restoring it, and maybe someday our friends and lovers will make their way here to meet us..."

[answer2bheard.livejournal.com]

"You know," Jim mused, taking a few steps back out of the water to take a seat on the sand nearby, "I've never had much in the way of either? I mean, I had friends at Fandom, sure, but I haven't been there very long. They're more like... like people I kind of knew for a bit, you know?"

Still, it wasn't a bad thought, either. More people to share all of this with. Though the whole of it seemed to hold up pretty well on its own, too.

[withoutverona]

"I've been with my girlfriend for over three years," Romeo said idly, not judging. "There are friends I've known as long. My family is important where I'm from."

If he hadn't just had that conversation with Mal, he wouldn't have added:
"I had a wife. Once."

Even if Juliet seemed more and more like a dream.

[answer2bheard.livejournal.com]

"Yeah?" Jim gave Romeo a curious little look at that one. "I never really gave much thought to stuff like that before. I mean, my dad left home when I was a little kid, so it was just me and my mom, most of the time. Marriage... girlfriends... things like that?"

He shrugged and settled back into the sand.

"I never really figured I needed them." He tilted his head thoughtfully. "What's it like? I mean... any of it? Being married?"

[withoutverona]

"That was like a thunderstorm," Romeo said. "Glorious and intense and terrifying. It didn't last long. She died. But I can't regret it."

He glanced over, thoughtful. "Once I would have said you needed love to live," he ventured. "I'm not so sure anymore. If you were happy with just your mother ... maybe that's a simpler, better life."

[answer2bheard.livejournal.com]

"I think I'd rather have a thunderstorm," Jim admitted a moment later. "I kind of... wasn't happy. I was always in trouble. Being brought home by the cops for doing stupid things just because I could. All in all, Mom's... pretty disappointed in me."

He couldn't blame her. He was pretty disappointed in himself, too. He was just half-decent at hiding that, sometimes.

"I don't do quiet well. I dream too big for that, and Montressor is... I don't know. It's claustrophobic."

[withoutverona]

"My father only started looking me in the eye again a few years ago," Romeo said. "Trouble happens, even if you try to stay out of it."

He picked up some sand, sifted it through his fingers so the motion echoed the toppling buildings. "Is that why you came to Fandom?"

[answer2bheard.livejournal.com]

Father trouble. Yeah, Jim heard that. He shrugged, gathering a handful of pebbles in his hand.

"Fandom wasn't my choice," he shared. "It was Mom's. Got an escort home from the cops one too many times, and a family friend had this pamphlet... I guess everyone figured that if nothing else, getting me out of the way couldn't hurt."

One by one, he threw the pebbles into the water.

[withoutverona]

"It wasn't my choice either," Romeo volunteered, and how long had it been since he told this story? Two years? Three? "I was asked to leave Verona, and Fandom was about as far as I could get and stay in America. I likely would have ended up on another planet, if that had been an option."

He started idly sketching in the sand with a fingertip. "It's not so bad, is it? For something we didn't chose."

[answer2bheard.livejournal.com]

"For something I didn't choose, it really isn't that bad," Jim agreed, after a moment's pause. "And for me, it is another planet. But there are some pretty neat people there. I thought it was going to be boring, stupid summer camp, and so far, it's been anything but."

Well, except for a few of the rainy days. Jim could have done without those.

"I haven't been arrested yet, there. I suppose that's good, right?" He threw another pebble, and then glanced at Romeo. "Was it better for you? I mean, after you got used to it?"

[withoutverona]

"It was never home," Romeo said, after a long moment to think about it. "But it was good, once the shock wore off. It made me grow up. It's easy to hide behind my last name, at home. No one cared in Fandom."

"You're lucky you get to start on the summer," he added. "I came in January. The gray and cold wrecked me. It was even worse than Tokyo's been."

[answer2bheard.livejournal.com]

"I'm pretty used to gray, from back home." Into the water went Jim's last pebble, and then he was sifting through the sand for more. "And rocks, and sharp cliffs. Here is kind of like Montressor, that way, but with way more water. Besides, the whole first week I was there was cold. We were in some place with these... really hairy guys with horns on their helmets. And all this last week it's just been rain and dark."

He smiled a little.

"But it's nice, even if the weather is kind of awful. I mean... that fresh start. Back home, Hawkins is just the name people call if they want a refill on their purp juice. But anywhere else... It can be whatever I make of it, right?"

[withoutverona]

"Or it can be nothing at all," Romeo said. "You could change it. Be -- Smith, or Prince, or Grayson. If we don't make it home, what this place becomes and what we become are in our hands."

A cascade of stone came especially close to him, and he rose to his feet. "Though I fear the place will crumble before we become much of anything."

[answer2bheard.livejournal.com]

"So..." Jim tossed his handful of pebbles into the air, managing to catch them all again as they fell. "Maybe we keep it from crumbling. If whoever made it doesn't want it anymore anyhow, it can't hurt, right?"

Jim pulled himself to his own feet, offering Romeo a lopsided smile. Apparently, he was the sort to dream big. "And I don't know about you, but I'd rather not have it all fall down on us while we're here."

[withoutverona]

Romeo arranged his own face into a matching grin. "We'd be poor caretakers if that happened, wouldn't we?" he asked, looking around. "I say we try to save it."

Not that he had the faintest idea where to start, but he was caught up in the romance of it all. And for romance, Romeo would do almost anything.

[answer2bheard.livejournal.com]

"Great! Then I say we start with..."

Wow, there was no shortage of decay to pick from, really.

"That one!" And he pointed at the building nearest. Mostly because it was nearest to them. "And we can save the champagne to celebrate with, when it's done."

[withoutverona]

"That one," Romeo agreed, mostly because it was closest. "All right. I'll race you?"

He didn't quite take off across the sand before Jim could answer, but he was thinking about it.